Nigerian Unions, Government Fail to End Strike

Nigerian unions failed to reach an agreement with President Goodluck Jonathan to end a strike that threatens oil exports from Africa’s top crude producer after talks in Abuja, the capital, union officials said.

“We’ve not reached a compromise, the status quo remains” Abdulwaheed Omar, president of the Nigeria Labour Congress, told reporters after the meeting yesterday in Abuja. The strike, now in the seventh day, has limited trade in stocks and the naira, closed ports and banks and sparked street protests.

The NLC and the Trade Union Congress called the strike after fuel subsidies the government said cost 1.2 trillion naira ($7.4 billion) last year were scrapped on Jan. 1. The oil union Pengassan won’t start shutting down oil output from fields operated by the likes of Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) from today as it had planned to await further talks with the governemnt, Peter Esele, president of the TUC, the country’s second-biggest labor federation, to which it is affiliated, said after the meeting.

The cost of the strike to sub-Saharan Africa’s second- biggest economy may be more than $1 billion a day, according to Gregory Kronsten, head of macroeconomic research at FBN Capital Ltd. in London.

Jonathan, who won a four-year term in April, had pledged to use savings to invest in power plants and roads in Africa’s most populous country, roughly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south. At the same time he faces an increase in religious violence in parts of the north where he has declared a state of emergency and says Islamic militants pose a worse threat to the country than the 1967-70 civil war.

Gun Attacks

More than 85 people have died in bomb and gun attacks since Christmas Day on churches in Abuja and in the north that the authorities blame on Boko Haram, a militant Islamic group that draws inspiration from Afghanistan’s Taliban movement.

Gasoline prices in Nigeria, where two-thirds of the population of about 164 million live on less than $1.25 a day, had been capped at 65 naira a liter (0.3 gallon), leading to a shortage of investment in refineries that forced the West African nation to import about 70 percent of its fuel.

Nigeria pumped about 2.2 million barrels of oil a day last month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. At least 90 percent of Nigeria’s crude is pumped by Shell, based in The Hague,Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), San Ramon, California-based Chevron Corp. (CVX), Total SA andEni SpA (ENI) in joint ventures with the state- owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp

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