Strike paralyzes Nigeria amid highest inflation in decades

Nigeria was paralyzed on Monday with power outages and airports closed, due to a strike by the country’s largest unions to demand better wages.

The economic reforms implemented by President Bola Tinubu — including the end of gasoline subsidies — have led to inflation not seen in 28 years.

In this most recent strike, workers shut down the national power grid and chased operators away from a major transmission hub, the Nigerian Transmission Company reported, adding that other workers dispatched to resume power service were prevented from doing so.

Elsewhere, public employees walked out or blocked office entrances, including at airports in the capital Abuja and the country’s commercial hub, Lagos. “All employees in the aviation sector must take a leave of absence.”until new notice”said his association.

“We demand salaries that allow us to live” he said in X at the Nigerian Labor Congress, denouncing the current “starvation wages”. The organization, together with the Trade Union Congress, represent hundreds of thousands of public employees in various sectors.

Unions are demanding that the current minimum wage of 30,000 naira (US$20) be increased to almost 500,000 naira (US$336). The government has offered 60,000 naira (US$40).

The unions’ demands would increase the national budget by 9.5 trillion naira ($6.3 billion), which could “destabilize the economy”said information minister Mohammed Idris.

After the president ended gasoline subsidies on his first day in office last year, the price of fuel more than doubled, in a country that is one of Africa’s largest oil producers. The prices of public transportation and raw materials then skyrocketed.

Tinubu’s government also devalued the national currency to encourage foreign investment, further destabilizing commodity prices in the import-dependent country of 210 million people.