Mr Ambali Olatunji, National President of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees, has stated that his union is ready to join the nationwide strike on Tuesday.
The Nigeria Labour Congress has already declared an indefinite strike to begin on Tuesday, October 3, 2023, in response to the hardship caused by the Federal Government's elimination of oil subsidies.
On Sunday, after the election of a new executive of the NULGE's Ondo State Chapter, Olatunji said that the union will join the strike.
"The only way to avoid President Bola Tinubu's NLC strike is to offer leadership," he stated. Mr. President, without sufficient diligence, brought this suffering to Nigeria by his decree on May 29. without due diligence to study the economy indices. We know that the outgone government misled him, and any policy that is bringing hardship to the people must be mitigated, we are not contradicting the withdrawal of the subsidy but there must be a structure to mitigate the effect of that subsidy removal.
“Because of our corruption and inefficiency, we cannot maintain our refineries, Nigeria is the only nation in the world that is oil producing, that cannot refine crude oil. Must we suffer that, why should we bear that burden, why can’t we bring those modular refineries operators in the Niger Delta together, sharpen their skills, license them and also collect tax from them, so that this would be internal, we don’t have to use hard currency to refine our crude oil, it would bring more jobs it would enhance local communities, why are we going after them to destroy their refineries when we don’t have capacity to it?
“Everywhere in the world government subsidized one thing or the other. We are surprised that President Tinubu is going the way of Buhari and others. If you really want to do palliative, pay 50 per cent gratitude to pensioners, people are dying, and people are committing suicide. Our belief is that the size of government is too large, you can not say we should tighten our belt while you lose your own belt. Ministers should not be more than 25 to 26, all others should be given special advisers. We should manage.”
The NULGE National President, however, opined that the government needed to go back to the local governments and give support to the local councils in the area of equipment, and infrastructural intervention among others.
He also faulted the distribution of the palliatives, alleging that, the exercise had been turned to political affairs.