NUPENG, PENGASSAN beg Buhari over fuel subsidy removal

Workers in the oil and gas sector on Sunday advised President
Muhammadu Buhari to shun any counsel that would destabilise or cause
chaos in the economy.

The Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and
the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN) gave
the advice in a statement in Lagos.

The statement was signed by Mr Okugbawa Lumumba, PENGASSAN General Secretary and Afolabi Olawale, NUPENG’s General Secretary.

The Managing Director, International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde
had on April 12 called on the Federal Government to remove fuel
subsidy because of low revenue mobilisation that existed in terms of
tax to Gross Domestic Product.

They said that the IMF advice on how to recover Nigerian economy was worrisome as it had become counter productive.

“Any economic policy that is devoid of human feelings can lead to
more social dislocations and upheavals, which will later become
counterproductive as currently experienced,’’ it said.

The unions said that IMF had created panic in the country with
associated hoarding of petroleum products, panic buying, skyrocketed
increases in prices of goods and services in the country.

It said that earlier, the IMF chief praised the significant progress
the nation had made in terms of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that
increased by 1.9 per cent in 2018 from 0.8 per cent in 2017.

It said that the IMF was not considering the pains and agonies the
people went through to achieve the gains of 2018, with almost
two-thirds of the world’s hungriest people among Nigerians.

The unions also cautioned that imposing more stringent reforms in
domestic revenue mobilisation including increase in VAT and securing
more domestic oil revenues through subsidy removal was an attempt to
destabilise the nation.

The unions in the statement appealed to President Buhari to put in
mind the current hardship the people were going through in their
collective journey to economic recovery.