Nigerian press backs fuel strike

Commentators in the Nigerian press largely back the four-day general strike against the government's decision to increase petrol prices.

The government has increased petrol prices by 25%

Some believe that at a time when oil prices have reached record highs, extra revenue from Nigeria's oil fields should go towards helping Nigerians, and not be making them poorer.

"With prices of $50 per barrel, and two million barrels of crude oil being supplied by Nigeria every day to the international market, for God's sake, Nigerians don't need to suffer", exclaims Chidi Egwuasi in the Daily Champion.

What should be a windfall for the Nigerian people, he writes, has in fact turned into a "curse due to the wicked calculations of our leaders".

No winners

"Fuel strike: Nigerians are losers", is the sombre headline in This Day.

A commentator in the Daily Champion agrees that neither the strike nor the price hikes are helping Nigeria.

"The truth has to be told that both petroleum price increases and the strike by the NLC are two rotten palm nuts which have no alternative uses", he argues.

Anger directed against President Olusegun Obasanjo's government is widespread.

The strike action is a moral imperative and a necessity to save Nigeria Ujudud Sharrif, Daily Trust

"We need not look any further than the Nigerian political and elite class as the problem with Nigeria", says a commentary in the Vanguard.

"It is a paradox that a country which is the sixth largest producer of crude oil... is one of the poorest countries in the world."

'Keg of gunpowder'

Ujudud Sharrif in the Daily Trust says disappointment in the nation's leadership is the real reason behind the strikes.

"The strike action is a moral imperative and a necessity to save Nigeria," he says.

The Daily Champion reminds its readers that far from being an isolated incident, it is the third general strike over fuel prices in 18 months.

"The people of this great nation are tired of the incessant price increase of petroleum products", it says.

The repeated disruptions lead the weekly magazine Newswatch to see worse problems ahead.

It describes the third major face-off between the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), which called this and previous strikes, and the government as a "keg of gunpowder".

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.