Nigeria: June 28, 2003

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The government is facing nationwide strikes because it proposes to raise gasoline and kerosene prices by 50 percent. The old prices (less than a dollar a gallon) were below the cost of producing the fuel and cost the governments $1.9 billion a year. But there is widespread hostility towards the government run oil industry, because most people see the oil business as a major source of corruption. Most of the government revenue from oil has been stolen by government officials over the years and this does not appear, to most Nigerians, to be changing.