Nigeria’s crippling general strike entered its third day on Friday after overnight talks between labour unions and government ended in deadlock.
Banks, schools and government offices remained closed across the country. The price of what little fuel was available on the black market continued to climb with public transport costing four times the usual price.
”We have not made sufficient progress to enable a resolution of the ongoing strike,” the head of the government delegation, Babagana Kingibe, told journalists after the talks.
”I don’t know which word is stronger … deadlock or stalemate,” said Abdulwaheed Omar, the head of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), the country’s biggest umbrella union.
Both sides in the dispute showed signs of digging in.
”We are paralysing everything. We are shutting down water, electricity and the rest,” NLC spokesperson Owei Lakemfa said.
”Our meeting with the government ended at 3am (2am GMT) but there was no resolution. So the strike continues,” he told Agence France-Presse.
”We are in this together with the NLC, whatever decision we take we execute together,” said Wale Dada of the white collar Trade Union Congress (TUC) umbrella union said.
The government for its part said it would clamp down on attempts to harass those who want to work.
”There were efforts in the last two days to disrupt the normal functioning of the [fuel] depots and there was harassment of those who wanted to work … These kind of acts which are clearly against the law will no longer be tolerated,” Kingibe told reporters early on Friday.
”I do not think the Nigerian people deserve to be held hostage by a group purporting to represent the Nigerian people’s wish indefinitely.”
On Thursday police used tear gas to disperse people manning a barricade on one of the roads leading into Lagos.
Union officials at the barricade said they would block all of the main roads into the city to ensure 100% compliance with the strike.
The unions are still holding out for a complete reversal of the hike in fuel prices decided by former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo on his last day in power.
He raised the pump price from 65 naira a litre to 75 naira (59 US cents).
”There is no empirical basis except an emotional basis for insisting on 65 naira,” Kingibe said.
He said the unions had rejected the government’s offer to set up a joint committee to examine a mechanism for price adjustment.
It would look at all the information ”and if these facts support their [labour’s] claim that N65 can be borne, then so be it”, he said.
For the past two days economic life has been paralysed in much of the country with schools, government offices and filling stations closed, although the strike has less of a following in some of the northern towns where powerful traders unions are opposed to it.
Oil production and exports have so far been unaffected by the strike action. Nigeria is the world’s sixth exporter of crude oil. – Sapa-AFP