Nigerian labor unions and their allies on Monday decided to state two-phase movement rather than an immediate general strike against the recent 30 percent increase in fuel prices.

"As an immediate step, protest rallies will be held across the country with effect from next Wednesday," Adams Oshiomhole, president of the Nigeria Labor Congress, told reporters in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital.

The national movement will be first held in Lagos, then in Kano, the leading industrial city in the north and eventually in Abuja, the nation's capital, by the end of this month, Oshiomhole said.

If these rallies don't bring down the fuel prices, the unions " will have no option but to commence on mass protests and work stoppages," he said. The unions are expected to meet again on October 3 to decide.

"By the second phase, we will disconnect oil export if government turns deaf to the protest," Oshiomhole said when asked by Xinhua whether the protest will affect Nigeria's oil exports.

Any unrest in the oil sector in Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer, will undoubtedly give a negative impact to the simmering world oil prices.

Two weeks ago, Nigeria's petrol price went up from around 50 naira (38 US cents) to 65 naira (49 cents) per liter, the seventh increase in fuel prices since President Olusegun Obasanjo took office in 1999.

Obasanjo said that price increases are inevitable in view of the tightened government spending and deregulation policy introduced two years ago that means long-standing government fuel subsidies will be abolished gradually.

According to the president, the government had financed about one billion dollars in fuel subsidies in the past six month as a result of high prices of petrol in the international market.

The development, he noted during a recent television chat program, could no longer be sustained as the money should be used to develop basic infrastructure to encourage economic growth for poverty eradication.

The 130 million Nigerians, of which over 70 percent live below a dollar per day, see cheap fuel as a birthright, as the country earns billions of dollars from oil yearly.

But the labor unions' six previous general strikes had done little while the government has successfully increased petrol price from 26 naira (20 cents) to 65 naira per liter since 2002.

"It has thus become necessary to adopt more far-reaching and comprehensive strategies ... to address fundamentally the wider problem of insensitive governance, which lies at the root of the endless crisis," Oshiomhole said.

"In light of these, we resolved to initiate ... the movement ( that) will include labor, civil society, women, students, pensioners, professional and religious bodies and the informal sector," he said.

Nigeria produces about 2.5 million barrels of crude per day, but is still forced to import more than half its daily demand of 30 million liters of fuel.

Its four aged state-owned refineries are currently operating at about 70 percent of their installed capacity.

Source: Xinhua