₦airaland Forum

okada_man:
Please do not put your faith in NLC/TUC. This movement is bigger than NLC. They too may be occupied.

LAGOS — Eleven human rights groups have dragged President Goodluck Jonathan before the International Criminal Court, ICC, over alleged killings of no fewer than 35 Nigerians by security agencies in the on-going protest against subsidy removal by the Nigerian government.

Human Rights Agenda Nigeria Network, HRAN and 10 other groups in the petition by HRAN chair, Mr Chino Obiagwu, want Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo of ICC, to open a preliminary examination of these alleged violations and to investigate and prosecute any international crime against the statute that might have been committed.

According to the petition, “on January 1, President Goodluck Jonathan’s government announced an official 120 per cent increase in the price of petrol. On January 9, 2012, the labour unions and civil society organisations, including HRAN and its affiliate groups, started nationwide peaceful legitimate protests in opposition to the increase.

“The protests are continuing across the country, and the armed troops are still on the streets shooting and killing protesters.

All appeals by opposition politicians, labour and civil society leaders for government to withdraw live lethal weapon from its officials were rebuffed. “HRAN and its affiliate groups are concerned that more killings of protesters will occur in coming days and urge you to urgently open preliminary examination of these killings, and where any crime under the Rome Statute of the ICC has been found to have possibly been committed, to hold President Jonathan and his security officials involved personally accountable.

Groups which co-signed the petition are Centre for Democracy and Development, Civil Resource Development and Documentation Centre-Nigeria, CLEEN Foundation, HEDA Resource Centre, Human Rights Monitor, Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Legal Defence & Assistance Project, Legal Resources Consortium, Partnership for Justice and Society for Gender and Child Advancement.

life_style:
Leave it at 65 naira, tackle corruption, build six refineries, cut Government executives salaries by 50 %, increase minimum wage to 50k then you can now remove subsidy.

reporter?:
Goodluck must find a way to arrest this situation.  Things are spiraling out of control. The video is very revealing to the hopeless situation of young people in Nigeria.
Imagine someone daring the NG police to shoot him - NG police that needs no invitation to kill!  People are actually willing to die for this cause!

[size=16pt]No Economic policy, no matter how good it looks on paper, will work in a nation where individuals can pocket billions and get away with it. The only thing the deregulation is going to achieve is double digit inflation (effectively devaluing the currency and making the nation poorer) and more looting.[/size] As for the sale of PHCN, and all the others BPE sold in OBJ's regime, these guys build up these corporations with your money, sabotage these corporations continually, and then turn around and tell you that the only way it can work is if it is privatized. At the end of the day, the same cabal purchases them for peanuts with your stolen billions and yet Nigerians celebrate because of the years of engineered frustration PHCN and the likes have subjected Nigerians to. It's pure and simple propaganda; a classical case of problem-reaction solution. Try googling the phrase "Hegelian Dialectic". It'll better explain how the global elite use these left-right, Christian-Muslim, regional and ethnic divisions to manipulate humanity into helping them achieve predetermined ends. It didn't start today, and unless we educate ourselves and break out of that dialectic, we will forever be slaves to the ruling elite.

Nashville:
On the contrary I hope this is not the case. I hope they remain stubborn so that the people can focus on the revolution takiing place in Nigeria. To me, this protest should not be about removal of subsidy. It should be about checking a wasteful and corrupt government. So if he agrees =N=65 per litre, will that be the end? Does that mean GEJ and the cabal can continue wasting and stealing our money. What are we really fighting for?

Let us be wise, Jonathan will revert the price because he fears a prolonged protests will lead to more revelations he does not want us to know as Nigerians, and this is what we need to know. This whole thing should be turned into a movement that holds government accountable for their actions and inactions. We need to show them they are accountable to us the people, and we can make the country ungovernable for them no matter how much they may have stolen.

nku5:
All is not lost, the rep. was told to push a separate motion. He can propose it at the next session.

@edo.girl - I don't think an snc will cause war. The key thing is for the right ppl to be chosen as representatives of the stakeholders

ABUJA- THE Senate and the House of Representatives, yesterday, expressed their resolve to end the current nationwide strike by organised labour against removal of fuel subsidy by government within 24 hours, following positive responses from both parties after series of meetings held in the past 72 hours.

Senate President, David Mark had called two separate meetings on Monday and Tuesday nights at his Apo Mansion to settle the impasse between Labour and the Federal Government.

The meetings which were attended by the leadership of Organized Labour led by President of Nigeria Labour Congress, Comrade Abdulwaheed Omar and his counterpart from the Trade Union Congress, TUC, Comrade Peter Esele was however deadlocked as Senate could not convince labour to call off the strike.

Vanguard gathered that the Senate has proposed a middle point where federal government and labour will meet by way of a new price regime for petroleum products instead of the complete removal of fuel subsidy.

Sources said that it was suggested to government to peg the price of petrol at N90 or N100 per litre.

It will be recalled that Senator Mark had given assurance that the impasse between Organized Labour and Federal Government on the removal of fuel subsidy will soon come to end.



Day 3: Protesters in Lagos at the Gani Fawehinmi park Ojota,



The House of Representatives on its part was confident an agreement would be reached between labour and government within 24 hours.

Briefing newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday, the chairman of the House Committee on Labour, Pastor Essien Ekpenyong Ayi said this was based on positive responses from the representatives of the organised labour and those of the Federal Government at the ongoing negotiation with the two parties on the issue.

According to the Chairman, “we are making progress, and I sincerely believe that in the next 24 hours or so, the effort of the House to resolve this matter shall be achieved”.

He said that during the interface, labour insisted that certain conditions must be met before the federal government could go ahead with the deregulation policy and lamented that none of the conditions such as fixing the nation’s refineries, fixing of roads, power supply and functional transportation among others, has been met before it went ahead with the policy.

Ayi however said that hope was not lost as both parties have seen reasons why the matter should be resolved amicably before further damage was done to the nation’s economy.

He said: “Today (yesterday) is the third day of the ongoing strike and you will agree with me that government has lost a lot of resources running into billions of naira as a result of the ongoing strike. I am made to understand that Nigeria has lost as much as N158.9 billion on daily basis from the ongoing strike. What is accrued to the federal government from her own share of the deregulation for 2012 is about N500billion from the N1.3trillion and if the strike is sustained for about five days, the government shall lose more”.

Govt can’t fight oil cabal with tied hands – Alison-Madueke

Meanwhile, Petroleum Minister, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, yesterday, gave reasons why the government would not revert fuel price to N65 per litre as being demanded by protesting Nigerians led by the Organised Labour since last Monday.

According to her, retaining fuel subsidy would entrench the nauseating graft in the downstream sector of the oil industry, mortgage the country’s future and make it almost impossible for the government to check the corrupt activities of some oil marketers, who are reaping bountifully from oil subsidy to the detriment of most Nigerians and the economy.

Taking over Ojota, Day 3 of the Labour strike in Lagos.

The Minister, who spoke in an NTA programme yesterday, said her experience as Petroleum Minister in the last16 months showed that fuel subsidy was the main cause of corruption in the downstream sector of the oil industry.

“People want us to fight the oil cabal and yet they don’t want us to remove subsidy, which is the main cause of corruption in the sector. We can’t fight corruption in the downstream sector with our hands tied,” she said.

Besides, Alison-Madueke urged Nigerians not to be unnecessarily hard on patriotic Nigerians, who played key roles in ensuring steady fuel supply in the county as oil marketers. “There are innocent marketers doing genuine business to keep Nigeria wet. We must not mix them with the corrupt ones. We shall go after the corrupt ones,” she said.

Lamenting that countries around Nigeria sell fuel at a gross higher rate even with the N141 per litre price, she said it was not possible to ensure zero smuggling of fuel at the borders, which, according her, even the United States of America had not been able to achieve.

According to her, fuel price in some neighbouring African countries in Naira are as follows:  Chad, N210; Ghana, N175; Niger, N181; Benin Republic, N167 and Morocco, N198.

Urging Nigerians and Organised Labour to buy into the deregulation policy in the interest of the country, the Minister said government wanted to leave a lasting legacy for the country and would embark on reforms to ensure a brighter Nigeria.

“We have only one country, one Nigeria. We want to leave a legacy for us to be remembered for in future. We want to ensure that we can look back after the next three years and say we managed well the temporary pains that came with the removal of fuel subsidy,” she said.

dem_people:
The question should be, why are your brothers, starting from the caliphate via IBB and ending with Atiku, insistent on killing, maiming and destroying lives.

And what can GEJ do?

Is he a magician?

Superego:
Suddenly the pieces start falling into place. [b]Why has Goodluck Jonathan not taken any determinate action against Boko Haram? How is it possible that such a group of menaces is able to arm, mobilize, transit and operate without any significant detection or deterrence from the Nigerian security services [/b]in towns very easy to control as we have in Northern Nigeria? With a doubling of security services up North, stop-and-search road blocks, bomb detectors and sniffing dogs and a few other security measures, there would definitely have been remarkable arrests and interrogation guided lead-up roundups.