Group Blasts Govs’ Forum Over Fuel Subsidy

Emma Amaize

27 June 2011

Warri — THE Forum for Justice and Human Rights Defence, FJHD, a Warri-based rights group, has condemned without reservation the recent call in Abuja on President Goodluck Jonathan by the Governors’ Forum to totally remove subsidy on petroleum products to afford the governors more money from the Federation Account to pay the N18, 000 minimum wage to civil servants in their respective states.

The group in a statement signed by its national coordinator, Oghenjabor Ikimi Esq. said, “We make bold to state that any removal of petroleum products subsidy by the Presidency would not only wreak hardship and poverty on the masses of this country, but same would definitely alienate the President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration from the masses nationwide, as the population of civil servants nationwide constitute about two percent of the Nigerian population”.

On the spate of kidnapping and bombing in the country, FJHD said, “We also use this medium to also condemn the spate of kidnappings, bombings and other violent crimes nationwide and we call on the Federal Government to urgently check same by overhauling the nation’s security apparatus to ensuring the safety of her citizens as it is the primary responsibility of every Nigerian Government in line with Section 14(2)(b) of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to ensure the welfare and security of her citizenry”.

Its words, “We also call on the Federal Government to properly equip the Nigeria Police Force and to train and retrain her personnel’s on modern policing and intelligence gathering through neigbourhood policing to ensuring the safety of the populace”.

Regarding the striking public primary and secondary school teachers in Delta State under the aegis of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), it urged them to “call off their over two weeks old industrial action in the state in the interest of their wards and students billed to write their primary six school leaving certificate examinations and their junior school certificate examinations respectively”.

It, however, requested the Delta State Government “to urgently put in place the necessary machinery to meeting the demands of the striking primary and secondary school teachers in the state in the interest of our educational sector”.

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