Civil servants under the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council, JNPSNC, Trade Union Side, have written to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, demanding an urgent intervention to address the worsening economic hardship facing workers and their dependants.
The workers called on the Federal Government to stabilise the price of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, at N500 per litre, approve an immediate Wage Award and upwardly review salaries and allowances across the public service.
They also demanded the immediate constitution of a committee to negotiate a new National Minimum Wage ahead of January 2027.
In a letter addressed to the President at the State House, Abuja, the workers said the recent increase in fuel prices to N1,430 per litre and above in some locations had further worsened the cost-of-living crisis.
They gave the Federal Government until Wednesday, September 30, 2026, to take action on their demands, warning that the prevailing hardship was creating palpable tension among workers and Nigerians.
The JNPSNC said the removal of fuel subsidy three years ago had triggered an astronomical increase in fuel prices and produced multiplier effects on the prices of essential commodities across the economy.
The council said the situation had made life increasingly unbearable for workers, adding that the provision of food palliatives was not a sustainable solution to the economic crisis.
It said: “It has dawned on Nigerian workers that the provision of palliatives such as bags of rice, Indomie, vegetable oil, garri, among other edible foods, is as good as weaponising Nigerians with poverty because it is a Pyrrhic intervention which is unsustainable, inaccessible to the majority of Nigeria’s population and also limited to political cronies.”
The workers argued that a more sustainable intervention would be to reduce the cost of fuel to N500 per litre, saying the measure would have a multiplier effect across the economy.
“Consequent upon the above, it is preferable that the Federal Government should provide an intervention that will trickle down to all Nigerians by making fuel available at an affordable amount as low as N500 (five hundred Naira), the amount at which fuel was being sold when the subsidy was first removed in the year 2023,” they said.
The council identified the restoration of workers’ purchasing power, improved productivity and service delivery, promotion of integrity and accountability, and the reinforcement of trust and industrial peace as major reasons for its demand for improved remuneration.
On fuel prices, the workers said the government should “look inward and stabilize the prices of fuel to an affordable minimum,” arguing that fuel remained an essential commodity with significant implications for the Nigerian economy.
“As a matter of reality, the current hardship being faced by the hapless Nigerian workers is caused by the astronomical increase in the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) to as much as N1,430.00, or more per one litre (this is a killing amount),” the council stated.
The JNPSNC further called for an intervention fund for stakeholders in the oil sector to stabilise fuel prices and eventually bring the pump price down to N500 per litre.
The council said the government could adopt another description for the intervention if the term “fuel subsidy” was considered unacceptable.
“The fuel intervention fund will give the opportunity to every Nigerian to benefit from the intervention fund because it will have multiplier effect in the life of every Nigerian and will naturally trickle down to the downtrodden and all the remotest parts of the country,” it said.
The council also endorsed a position attributed to Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President, Joe Ajaero, on measures to address the fuel crisis.
Ajaero was quoted as saying: “Nigeria as an oil-producing country we have sufficient local refining capacity even as this substantially resides with the private sector.”
He also said: “As a nation, and as a people endowed with enormous fossil resources, we are deserving of a certain level of protection or buffer against the gales from the Gulf, and indeed, other gales.”