The Nigeria Labour Congress has strongly slammed President Bola Tinubu's address to the country on Monday, claiming that it utterly ignored the difficult circumstances that the majority of Nigerians are currently experiencing and failed to recognise the significant pains and suffering they have undergone.
In a statement released on Tuesday, NLC President Joe Ajaero claimed that the President's guarantees and promises made during the national broadcast were not the "silver bullet" that Nigerians had anticipated.
According to him, the NLC anticipates the next announcement to be about how the current administration intends to revive the public refineries, which have been laying inactive for so long.
Ajaero asserted the main problem with the entire subsidy story is the grounded refineries.
“Unfortunately, the entire speech by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was completely silent on the issue of the repair of our national refineries.
“Consistent with our perception of the misalignment of Mr President’s promises and offerings to the reality faced by millions of workers and ordinary Nigerians was the failure of President Tinubu to unmask those behind the looting of Nigeria’s commonwealth under the guise of petrol subsidy,” he asserted.
The NLC president said it was unacceptable for the President to lament like ordinary Nigerians about a group that he referred to in his speech as the “elites of the elites who have stolen so much from Nigeria that they have become so powerful as to constitute a threat to democratic governance”.
“What Nigerians expected from Mr President is a firm commitment to bring these economic saboteurs to justice and recover what they have stolen. Mr President’s statement on working with organised labour to review the national minimum wage is out of sync with what has played out since President Tinubu removed the so-called petrol subsidy.