The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has issued a stern warning to the Federal Government, threatening nationwide protests if recent hikes in telecommunications and electricity tariffs are not reversed.
The decision was reached during the NLC’s National Executive Council (NEC) meeting held in Yola, Adamawa State, where the congress also inaugurated its Compressed Natural Gas-driven Mass Transit Buses for the North East Zone.
The controversy began when the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) approved a 50% increase in telecommunications tariffs, marking the first such hike in over a decade.
Telecom operators had lobbied for the increase, citing escalating operational costs due to high inflation and currency devaluation.
Many telecom consumers believed the percentage of the hike was too much, while some grudgingly accepted it as a necessity considering the general inflation that has seen other prices gone up significantly across other sectors of the economy.
However, one of the first implementations of the tariff by MTN jolted many subscribers who noted that the percentage of increment was 200 percent.
MTN subscribers woke up one day to find that a weekly bundle that was being bought for about N2000 had jumped to N6000.
There was an immediate outcry and many subscribers resumed agitation against the hike.
The NLC has never been in support of the 50 percent hike in tariff, much less even higher implementations.
The labour body called it “insensitive and unjustifiable,” arguing that it would further burden citizens already grappling with a severe cost-of-living crisis.
In addition to the telecom issue, the NLC has expressed strong opposition to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (NERC) ongoing reclassification of electricity consumers.
The reclassification aims to migrate consumers from lower bands to Band A under the guise of service improvement, effectively imposing higher tariffs.
The NLC has labelled this move as a “sham” and an act of “economic violence” against the working class, vowing to resist any further increases in electricity tariffs.
The NLC has outlined a series of actions to protest the tariff hikes, including:
Service boycotts, data purchase suspension, public mobilization against the tariff hikes.
The NLC on Sunday directed its affiliates to be on alert for mass action if the Federal Government fails to implement the terms of the agreement reached on the telecommunication services charge by the 10-man committee.
The committee had agreed to reduce the tariff hike to 35 percent instead of the 50 percent initially approved.
