Lagos, Nigeria (PANA) - The paralysing general strike in Nigeria over the increase in the prices of petroleum products entered the fifth day Monday with no sign of a let-off as the leadership of the country's labour congress deliberate on the grave situation.
Adams Oshiomhole, national president of the congress, is chairing the emergency meeting of the congress executive council in Abuja.
He is expected later to lead labour at another round of talks with the government to try and break the stalemate that has characterised their previous negotiations.
Information Minister Jerry Gana says he is optimistic that an agreement will be reached to end the strike Monday.
He described as constructive the series of consultations between the two sides at the weekend, based on a government concession slashing the price of petrol and diesel and returning that of kerosene to its old rate.
Labour has rejected that offer, saying that only a total cancellation of the 50-percent hike would be acceptable.
Oshiomhole told reporters that labour's position is unchanged with no new offer from government, although informed sources said there were indications that the government could agree to further bring the pump price of petrol to 23 naira a litre against the old rate of 20 naira preferred by labour.
Meanwhile, government could be testing the impact of its measure to break labour's rank on the strike with a directive to senior public servants to ignore the congress order and return to work.
Slamming the policy as a divide-and-rule
tactics, the congress
has vowed to maintain the workers solidarity and sustain the
industrial action which has virtually shut down the oil-dependent
economy.
President Olusegun Obasanjo and his advisers appear isolated on the fuel price hike that has been rejected by a cross-section of the population, including students, non-governmental organisations and the legislature.
Both chambers of the National Assembly have in separate motions urged a reversal to the old rate while Obasanjo's People's Democratic Party has issued a public statement criticising the procedure, timing and margin of the increase.
For his part, the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Olubunmi Okogie, put the blame for the unpopular decision on the doorstep of the president's advisers.
But the cleric says that Obasanjo should learn from the mistakes of past leaders of the country.
Meanwhile, a human rights group, the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, says it is offering free legal services to any worker who may be victimised by government as a result of the strike.
The strike has unleashed untold hardship on the citizens, with commuters trekking to their destinations after commercial vehicles were forced off the streets.
The situation has been made worse by an acute shortage of petrol, with a few operational filling stations clogged by queues amid a flourishing black market where the products sell for more than five times the normal price.
For Nigerians in Lagos and five other south-western states, it is another holiday Monday, declared by the governments in the region to mark 12 June, the date of the 1993 presidential election annulled by the military regime of Ibrahim Babangida.
Pro-democracy groups plan rallies to commemorate the occasion and honour those who lost their lives in the democratic struggle.
They include millionaire politician Moshood Abiola, the acclaimed winner of the cancelled polls, who died in detention in 1998, and his wife, Kudirat, murdered on a Lagos street in 1996.
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