The organised labour has called on the Federal Government to take a critical look at the economic prescriptions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) before adopting them.
Speaking against the backdrop of plans by the Federal Government to privatise refineries, the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) cautioned the government against adopting policies that would further hurt the economy and impoverish Nigerians.
Chairman, Rivers State Council of TUC, Mr. Chika Onuegbu, who made this submission, argued that the fact that the prescriptions of IMF are working in Europe and America, did not mean that they will work in the Nigeria.
He said: “It is no longer news that Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), gave a fatal blow to Nigerians and the Nigerian economy. Some of these prescriptions are like seeds that grow well in Europe and America, but when planted in Nigeria, they die and poison the ground.”
Onuegbu, who is also the Public Relations Officer of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), argued that much of the gains ascribed to privatisation by the proponents of the policy, are actually gains from other reforms.
“For instance in Nigeria, the government did not privatise NITEL for MTN, Econet (now Airtel) to sprout and grow. They simply created the enabling environment and the GSM companies reacted appropriated. The rest is now history,” he said.
On the planned sale of the nation’s refineries, Onuegbu explained that labour has advised the government to create the enabling environment that would enable private business invest in refineries.
He said incentives should be granted to allow for the development of private refineries alongside the existing ones, stressing that a framework should be articulated that will make available the required crude for effective functioning of local refineries.
“There is need to incentivise and/or compel the International Oil Companies (IOCs) to refine an agreed percentage of crude oil in the country. A suggestion is to tie upstream licensing to downstream investment. In addition, private ownerships of Jetties should be encouraged.
“We also suggested that the nation’s four refineries should be stand-alone entities, and independent of the proposed National Oil Company (NOC).The NOC will hold the government shares. The management of each refining company should be autonomous and fully responsible for its success and failure,” he said.
The labour chief said the debate on the impact of privatisation is on-going, noting that the Economist Magasine had in February, conducted a debate on privatisation and the result still affirms that there are divergent views by economists on privatisation as a policy.
This, he said, underscores the need for Nigerians and Nigeria to take a critical view of the economic prescriptions of the Breton Woods institution before adopting of its policies.
He said the arguments for and against privatisation have shown that it “remains widely and increasingly unpopular, largely because of the perception that it is fundamentally unfair both in conception and execution,” adding that politicians have at varied times used privatisation as a vendetta against trade unions.
“There appears to be an agreement among scholars that privatisation of State Owned Enterprises (SOE) has some adverse effects on workers and their trade unions. This should not be a surprise as the politicians have in many cases, used privatisation as a punitive action against trade unions.
“It is, therefore, very important that the labour movement restructures and transforms itself to be better prepared for changes in the environment of labour relations, such as privatisation.
“As aforementioned, this restructuring and transformation of unions can only be driven successfully by the leadership of trade unions,” Onuegbu added.
