Abuja — President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has said that the nation's oil refineries are not operating at optimal capacity due to what he alleged, as a con spiracy between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and oil marketers.

Oshiomhole who spoke yesterday in Abuja at a rally to flag off the nationwide strike called by the NLC to protest the latest increase in fuel prices said: "The NNPC and the oil marketers have conspired to make sure the refineries do not work, that is why when the Federal Government pump in money in the afternoon, at night they will use their agents to blow them up."

"We have the names of those involved. Some of them have been ministers until recently. If we do not talk now, tomorrow can never work out," he said.

The NLC president, however, did not name those behind the conspiracy.

He lamented that "Nigeria is not about collecting tax alone, but about using the tax collected to provide the basic amenities for Nigerians." The labour leader also said "increase in prices of products have never guaranteed supply."

Oshiomhole pointed out that the argument the Federal Government was adducing for the increase in pump prices of petroleum products "is not different from what they told us yesterday."

"They must make the refineries to work because tax payers money were used to set them up," he said.

In its campaign to raise fuel prices, the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) said the nation had come to rely on importation (hence the need to match domestic prices with international trend) because the refineries could not meet the nation's demand of petrol put at 30 million litres per day.

The PPPRA said the difference between demand and supply was still there even after government had pumped about $900 million into fuel importation between May 1999 and 2002 on the repairs of the plants.

Currently, only two of the country's four refineries are in operation. They are the two plants located in Port Harcourt. The NNPC had said that the refineries were shut down following the cut in crude supply to the plants due to the vandalisation of the Escravos pipeline.

However, before then, the four refineries with a combined installed capacity of 445,000 barrels per day (bpd), operated at an average capacity of 57 percent. Last year, NNPC's figures put the refineries' performance at 47 percent, with about 50 percent of domestic needs for fuel still imported.