By VICTOR AHIUMA -YOUNG
LAGOS—The Joint Action Forum, JAF, has called on Nigerians to brace up for mass action and protest should the government go ahead with the planned removal of subsidy on petroleum products next year.

JAF, which collaborates with labour in the Labour and Civil Society Coalition, LASCO, said Nigerians should reject planned full deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry.

It warned that the policy, if allowed to sail through, would worsen the poverty level in the country.

The forum, in a statement by Dr. Dipo Fashina and Mr Abiodun Aremu, chairman and secretary, respectively, said: “We are concerned that deregulation and privatisation are neo-liberal policies of global capitalism in collaboration with the Nigerian ruling cabal to deprive the working people of their collective patrimony.

“We had maintained that Nigeria is the only petroleum-producing country without a functional refinery of its own, while successive regimes since Ibrahim Babangida had used the same privatisation and deregulation arguments and severally deregulated fuel prices since the mid- 80’s with the implications being increases in prices of petrol, diesel, kerosene and aviation fuel, LPFO, which are now expensive and in some cases, out of reach of the people and the industries.

“We demanded that “Nigerians should ask: why has government never prosecuted anybody in the mismanagement and turn-around-maintenance of the refineries? It is because those in government and their fronts are the same culprits?

Instead of fighting corruption in the system and punishing those so-called cabals, it is the working people they had chosen to afflict with more sufferings. Nigerians should reject the anti-working people policies of deregulation and privatisation in its entirety.

“Nigerians should prepare for an indefinite mass action should government go ahead to hike prices of petroleum products and join forces with JAF and its labour allies to resist these wicked policies.

”Government has a responsibility to ensure that the four refineries are optimally functional and  building of new refineries to meet the fuel need of all.

Government must ensure massive investment in public infrastructure such as  housing, healthcare, schools, roads, water, among others, as a fundamental necessity of governance to ensure “maximum welfare and happiness” of the working people,” the forum added.