The Role of National Assembly in Conflict Resolution: A Case of Anti- Subsidy Strikes of 2012
The legislature has added the responsibility of conflict mediation and resolution to its numerous functions. The legislature has established an enviable record of performance in this area. For instance, since 1999 the legislature has positively intervened and settled several government– labour disputes, be it over minimum wage, ASUU demands for better conditions of service in the Universities or most recently, the fuel subsidy strike. The timing of the removal of subsidy from petroleum products by the Executive was most inauspicious. It came at a time when majority of Nigerians were in their various villages and communities for the Christmas and New Year festivities. They were trapped and stranded as they could not afford the huge escalation in fuel price which moved from N65 to N140 per litre of petrol in the average Nigerian community. No one anticipated such sudden sharp increase as Nigerians had planned the budget for their trips based on existing cost parameters and indices. People were thus thrown into unavoidable economic turmoil and even reduced to the level of destitution and beggary. As the representatives of the people, The National Assembly were inundated with barrage of calls and protestations from our constituents all over the country on their worsening economic situation occasioned by the subsidy removal. Confronted with such a terrible situation, the House of Representatives had to convene an emergency session on a Sunday, 8th January, 2012 (the first of its kind in our legislative history). This culminated in the decision of the House to set up the Hon. Farouk Law an led Ad-Hoc Committee on the Investigation and Monitoring of the Fuel Subsidy regime. To address the urgent matter of the impending strike, the National Assembly set up the Patrick Ikhariale Committee to reach out to Labour and arrest the situation. The findings of the Committee have since revealed that the huge funds being misapplied by a privileged few in our society in the name of o
