Unions prepare to call off general strike in Nigeria

NIGERIAN unions prepared last night to call off a crippling general strike that had paralysed the world’s eighth-biggest oil exporter after reaching a deal with the government on a compromise price for petrol.

Strike leaders said the accord to end the country's longest general strike for four decades followed their meeting with President Olusegun Obasanjo, who left yesterday for Monrovia to meet embattled Liberian leader Charles Taylor.

The deal would end a week of economic disruption and sometimes violent protests in which at least eight people died days before a visit by US President George W Bush.

The strike threatened production and oil shipments, the lifeblood of Nigeria's economy, and added to political tensions in the country still emerging from years of military rule.

"An agreement has been reached," said Owei Lakemasa, spokesman for the umbrella Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), which spearheaded the walkout. Asked whether the NLC would call off the strike, another union official said: "I believe so."

Ports, banks, shops and petrol stations in Africa's most populous country of over 120 million people have been shut since the start of the strike on Monday.

Union officials said it was the longest mass walkout of Nigerian workers since a 14-day 1964 general strike over pay.

The latest action had the potential for triggering wider political unrest after the opposition called for "mass action" to protest alleged rigging of Obasanjo's re-election in April.

A gap of just three naira (less than three US cents) had separated the NLC and the government on a compromise fuel price after Obasanjo's last offer.

It was not immediately clear what price had been agreed in yesterday's deal. NLC officials admitted their bargaining power had been substantially weakened after the umbrella union of senior oil workers withdrew its support for the walkout, effectively diminishing the threat of disruption to oil shipments.

The Trade Union Congress whose affiliates include the PENGASSAN union of senior oil workers who monitor crude oil exports, said on Saturday its members were returning to work to avert serious damage to the economy.