Nigeria’s government and trade unions took their battle over a controversial fuel tax back to court on Monday, five days after labour leaders suspended plans to launch a crippling general strike over the levy.
Lawyers from both sides came to the appeals court in Abuja, where judges began hearings into the legality of the both the fuel tax and labour’s threat to hold a nationwide protest over its reintroduction.
The case has become a key battle for President Olusegun Obasanjo as he strives to push through wide-ranging economic reforms in Africa’s most populous country in the teeth of deep public distrust of his regime.
In itself, the new 1,5 naira (1,2 United States cent) levy on a litre of petrol is a relatively modest increase intended to fund repairs to Nigeria’s decrepit and dangerous road network.
But the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has chosen to make a stand on the issue, knowing that the next stages in Obasanjo’s reforms will include public sector job cuts and a faster programme of privatisation.
Last week hundreds of thousands of NLC supporters stayed away from work on Wednesday morning in support of a general strike, which was called off later in the day after Obasanjo suspended the fuel tax.
The appeals court had earlier ordered labour to stand down its strike threat and the government to cease collection of the tax until a judgement could be made on both issues. On Monday, the battle shifted back to court.
The government brought the case before the appeals court in a bid to have the strike ruled illegal. Labour countered with a motion seeking to have the tax itself declared unlawful.
Obasanjo has argued that the tax — which came into effect on January 1 until its suspension last week — is simply a revival of a dormant levy that had been cut back to a rate of zero and forgotten about.
As such, he says, it did not require new parliamentary legislation to bring it back into effect.
Labour counters that the tax is, in fact, new, and cites Obasanjo’s decree reintroducing it as an example of his alleged undemocratic tendencies.
The court is expected to rule on this and on the legality or otherwise of the strike, which the government contends breaches labour law.
Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil exporter and any strike that manages to disrupt some or all of its two million barrels per day in exports of crude could force up prices on the world market.
But a similar protest in June last year failed to have much effect on the oil sector — which is largely controlled by foreign multinationals. Its most dramatic effects were felt, in fact, on Nigeria’s teeming city streets.
Last year’s stoppage paralysed the economy for eight days and triggered protests in which at least 12 strikers and bystanders were shot dead by Nigeria’s notoriously trigger-happy police.
Obasanjo has vowed to abide by the ruling of the courts on the tax.
”This is a government that believes in the rule of law,” Obasanjo told a small group of reporters outside the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week. ”When the court delivers its ruling it will be obeyed.”
Lawyers for both sides made their depositions on Monday. The hearing continues. — Sapa-AFP