BUHARI APPOINTS MOHAMMED LAWAN BUBA AS NEW PPPRA CHAIRMAN

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Engineer Babachir David Lawal, has announced the appointment of Alhaji Mohammed Lawan Buba as chairman of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA).

 He disclosed this in Abuja yesterday after a meeting with the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) to review issues involved in the new pump price of petrol recently announced by the federal government.

The SGF said President Muhammadu Buhari had approved the appointment of Buba, adding that he had also expressed willingness to serve on the board.

Buba is a former Director General of the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC) and also a former Group Executive Director of Commercial & Investment at NNPC.

Labour had on Sunday suspened its indefinite strike to demand reversal of the pump price of petrol from N145 to N86.50 with a resolve to enter into negotiation with the federal government on the review of minimum wage for workers, electricity tariff and constitution of the board of the PPMC among other issues.

 The PPPRA board which has the statutory role of determining and fixing the prices of petroleum products has not been constituted for over four years.

 He said a 16-man committee had been set up to look into the various issues that emanated from the hike in price of petrol such as the minimum wage, implementation of the N500bn palliative in the 2016 budget as well as the review of the pump price.

 The Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, said the review of the minimum wage was a tripartite negotiation arrangement.

 He added that the 16-man committee was expected to work out the framework to constitute the committee for the minimum wage review.

 “I chair the committee and we are waiting for the NLC to forward their nominees so that the committee can be inaugurated sometime next week,” he said.

 Asked if the committee would also be working with the other factions of the NLC, Ngige said:

“We don’t know of any faction. We had our problem as a government and NLC is NLC, TUC is TUC. We will not pry into anybody’s problem. If they have in-house problem, they will solve it.

Husband and wife have problems and they reconcile. Government will be willing to play a major role to make sure we have one indivisible NLC.”

 Responding to questions from journalists, NLC President, Comrade Ayuba Wabba who led other labour leaders to the meeting confirmed that the meeting was successful.