New fuel strike shuts down key cities

Several of Nigeria's biggest cities were paralysed on Monday as labour unions began a four-day general strike to protest at the latest fuel price increases under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s deregulation programme. In the country’s commercial capital, Lagos, banks, schools, offices and businesses were closed and usually crowded streets were deserted as millions heeded the call by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) trade union movement to stay at home. The strike also had a major impact in the southwestern city of Ibadan, the northern city of Kano and Port Harcourt, the main oil centre in southeastern Nigeria. In all three cities, schools, banks, government offices and many private businesses were forced to close. In the capital, Abuja, the strike was only partially successful. Buses and taxis continued to ply the streets, while some offices and banks worked under heavy police guard. But in most of the country of 126 million people, government services were shut down and business activity was greatly reduced. In Lagos anti-riot police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of protesters that blocked a major urban freeway, smashing the windscreens of the few motorists that ventured out during the morning. In the northern city of Kaduna, police fought running battles with protesters who lit bonfires of old tyres on the streets. NLC president Adams Oshiomhole accused the government of failing to take advantage of the two-week notice period given by his 29-union body issued to either reverse the 25 percent increase in fuel prices announced in late September or even engage the unions in dialogue. “If the President is not willing to talk we have no alternative but to go on strike,” Oshiomhole told reporters on Sunday. The trade unions and their allies, which include civic groups and opposition parties, said that after the first four-day stoppage they would give the government another two weeks to reverse the price hikes. If the prices remained unchanged after the two weeks, there would be an indefinite general strike, they said. Nigeria’s two powerful oil unions said they had joined the strike on Monday, raising fears of further disruptions to global oil supplies at a time oil prices are at historic highs of over US$50 per barrel. However, union leaders and oil company officials acknowledged the strike was unlikely to have any short-term impact on Nigeria’s 2.5 million barrels per day oil output. Peter Akpatason, president of the blue-collar National Union of Petroleum and Gas Workers of Nigeria (NUPENG), said members of his union working in offices had been asked to stay at home. NUPENG was also refusing to allow crew changes at oil platforms and export terminals, but it had not yet asked its members working on these facilities to down tools, he added. The white-collar Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) said that although it was not a member of the NLC, it had asked its own members to stay away from work for one day on Monday in sympathy with the NLC demands. Asked whether the strike had affected operations, a spokesman for Royal Dutch/Shell, which accounts for about half of Nigeria’s oil production, said: “Administratively, yes. But the oil is flowing.” Udom Inoyo, an executive of ExxonMobil, which is Nigeria's second largest oil producer, said there had been no serious impact on its own operations. “For people who don’t feel safe to come to work, caution is the word. But there has been no impact on production and exports,” Inoyo said. However, industry experts believe the impact will begin to tell on oil operations if the strike is prolonged. Perhaps bearing this in mind, Obasanjo met Oshiomhole and other union leaders later on Monday. The government issued a statement afterwards saying that a 33-member committee comprising government ministers and five union leaders, among others, had been set up to devise ways of bringing “short-term relief and medium-term positive impact” to Nigerians suffering from the steady rise in fuel prices. The current strike is the sixth to be called by the NLC since Obasanjo began to phase out fuel subsidies three years ago as part of his policy of deregulating Nigeria’s downstream oil sector. The government insists the reforms are necessary to eliminate domestic fuel subsidies of over US$2 billion a year and corruption that has left four state-owned refineries moribund, leaving Africa’s leading oil producer dependent on fuel imports. But the unions argue that the resulting rise in fuel and public transport costs imposes further punishment on Nigeria's impoverished population. Although a small minority of Nigerians are extremely wealthy, more than 70 percent of the population lives on less than one US dollar a day.