Nigeria’s General Strike Called Off

Trade unions in Nigeria suspended their nation-wide strike Monday.

The unions began the strike last week to protest against the government’s decision to end a fuel subsidy on January 1, which doubled the fuel prices there.

Now, President Goodluck Jonathan has agreed to restore part of the subsidy, cutting the prices by a third.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to the BBC’s Tomi Oladipo, who is in Lagos, Nigeria.

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Marco Werman:Trade Unions in Nigeria today suspended their nationwide strike. The Unions began the strike last week to protest a Government’s decision to end a fuel subsidy on January first. The move, more than doubled gas prices in Nigeria. Now President Goodluck Jonathan has agreed to restore part of the subsidy cutting prices by a third, not where they were before January first but enough to end the Government’s confrontation with the unions. The BBC’s Tomi Oladipo, Tomi this is an abrupt U turn by President Goodluck Jonathan. Did he cave to pressure?

Tomi Oladipo: Well I would say he caved to pressure not quite what the public wanted. Just before the new year the price of petrol in Nigeria was about 40 US cents to the litre and by the time the fuel subsidy was removed it more than doubled to 86 so a lot of people were sort of …there was sort of outrage a public outrage at this. Now it’s been pulled down to 60 US cents per litre but the public is not quite satisfied. They want it brought back to the original price so yes so the President he might say that he sort of backed down but for the public they don’t see that as a good move for them.

Werman: So the strikers, do they see this as a victory?

Oladipo:Well the labour unions are sort of caught in between because to be honest this wasn’t really a labour driven strike. yes the labour announced there was going to be a strike but even before just they did that a lot of people came out on social media and organised all these protests and we have tens of thousands of people in different cities protesting against the increase in the price of fuel. A lot of these people who did come out are not happy about it but the labour unions say that you know they first met in the middle ground and the people should settle for that now.

Werman: So what was the reaction to the President’s reaction like? Were the strikers at all jubilant?

Oladipo: Well the strikers said that was the best they could get and they called off the strike immediately .People were back to work on Tuesday but for a lot of the public feel that’s what they wanted . The salaries are not going up but the price of fuel has gone up from what it was two weeks ago. So a lot of people feel that they still need you know something needs to be done for them to be able to afford this increase in the price of fuel but for the labour unions they feel like they have done their job.

Werman: Tomi, President Jonathan had intended for the revenues created by the end of the subsidy to build infrastructure in Nigeria does that mean he will have to postpone development projects now for the country?

Oladipo: Well no .Right now the subsidy is sort of like a partial subsidy. It’s not the full subsidy that they had before so a lot of the profit they get from this will be used for infrastructural development. The thing is that the Nigerian people do not trust the Government to use this money properly because the government really in the past has not shown that it can use it properly. There still is a lot of corruption within the government and that is what people are complaining about. Yes the government will have some excess money to use but the public wouldn’t trust it to use it well.

Werman: The BBC’s Tomi Oladipo speaking with us from Lagos

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