IMF advice to remove fuel subsidy is ill-conceived — Oil workers

Oil workers under the auspices of Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN), last week frowned at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) advice to the Federal Government to impose more stringent reforms in domestic revenue mobilisation through subsidy removal among others.

They said such advice from the bank was an attempt to destabilize the nation.

In a joint statement signed by Afolabi Olawale and Okugbawa Lumumba, general secretaries of NUPENG and PENGASSAN, respectively, the oil workers said IMF’s statement has created panic in the country with associated hoarding of petroleum products, panic buying, and skyrocketing increases in prices of goods and services in the country.

“It is quite bewildering and baffling that IMF is not considering the pains and agonies Nigerians went through even to achieve the acknowledged gains of 2018, with almost two-thirds of the world’s hungriest people among the Nigerians,” they stated. The unions said the statement was “loaded with poisons, considering the antecedents of IMF in our economic challenges and struggles over decades of our nationhood.

“The various devaluation cases of our currency on the strength of advice of the same IMF have been a very big burden on our nation for several years now.

The unions, however, pleaded with President Muhammadu Buhari to constantly put in mind the current hardship Nigerians are going through in the nation’s collective journey to economic recovery.