By Lola Idahosa, Kaduna
Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC) has condoled victims of tanker explosions and called on the Federal Government to urgently compensate them. NLC also called for an urgently reinvent the refineries and put an end to shameful explosion-prone petroleum products importation.
According to NLC, ”We must return to the era in which petroleum products were moved from refineries through protected pipelines to deports at short distances which put less burden on drivers and no risk at all on communities”.
A three page press release signed by Issa Aremu, Deputy President of Ajaero –led faction of NLC and General Secretary, Textile Workers’ Union made available to Newsdiaryonline said “Congress joins all Nigerians to condole with hundreds of victims of the recent unacceptable criminal serial tanker explosions through the country. NLC however demands that governance preventive measures through urgent revival of domestic refineries, railway and road transportation infrastructure, enforcement of road/driving rules are the panacea to the unacceptable killing of innocent Nigerians without official declaration of war. Tankers’ explosions had unacceptably taken lives just as many as Boko haram insurgency does in recent times. Indeed what we have at hand were not “accidents” but avoidable incidents due to lack of good governance with respect to the mismanaged petroleum downstream sub-sector”.
“It is bad that we import petroleum products. However it is worse that Nigeria moves highly inflammable products, (which are indeed mobile bombs!), through hundreds of bad roads. It is a peculiar Nigerian underdevelopment that must stop with the new administration of President Muhammedu Buhari.
NLC also advised the federal Government not to privatize rail transportation but to fix it, according to the press release, rail way transportation remains “one of the cheapest and safest inter-city means of transportation of products and humans. Buhari and Osinbajo presidency must hit the ground running and deepen the ongoing revival of the railways through public investment. The solution is not in privatizing the railways. You don’t privatize what is yet to be built.
President Buhari must avoid the pitfall of dogmatic privatization thatdoes not add value to national well being whatsoever but enriches few individuals. Nigerian railway still runs on narrow gauge with the maximum of between 25 – 35 km per hour unlike standard gauge and high speed trains in China. Nigeria Railway requires massive injection of funds to upgrade its tracks to standard gauge and modernize the wagon and haulage facilities. If fixed, Railways can also absorb hundreds of thousands of jobs for the millions of unemployed youths under the Buhari dispensation”.
“A country that proudly shares excess crude receipts among all tires of government should certainly spend this excess to fix the bad roads.
As a matter of right, not favour or charity, NLC demands that government must urgently compensate all the victims of these avoidable carnage either in Onitsha or Lagos”.
