Leaders of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) on Friday walked out of the meeting of the Presidential Steering Committee on subsidy palliatives scheduled to hold at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
NLC President Joe Ajaero, led a delegation to the Chief of Staff’s office, venue of the meeting at about 5pm but were soon on their way out of the villa.
The labour union accused the federal government of using the meeting as a pretext to deceive Nigerians.
ait.live gathered from a source at the meeting that three subcommittees were supposed to be present at the meeting including the Mass Transit, the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and cash transfer subcommittees.
The source also said the subcommittees were scheduled to brief the steering committee but did not show up.
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Steering committee members were said to have made excuses for the absentees and wanted the meeting to continue, but a quorum was not formed.
It would have been the fourth in the series of meetings held since the implementation of the petroleum subsidy removal.
The meeting was to have been a continuation of previous meetings over the initial increase of the pump price of petroleum to N520 per litre.
Organized labour has already scheduled a nationwide protest for August 2 to press home their demands over the petroleum subsidy removal.
The last meeting of the steering committee held last Wednesday but government representatives were unable to convince the labour leaders to shelve their planned action.
Wednesday’s meeting, which also took place in the office of the Chief of Staff to the President was attended by Labour delegations led by the NLC president and his Trade Union Congress (TUC) counterpart, Festus Osifo.
It is not clear if or when the meeting will reconvene
Editor Oloyede Oworu
