LAGOS (AFP) - Nigeria's central labour movement and a coalition of civil society groups decided to suspend a nationwide general strike which was due to begin at midnight, union leader Adams Oshiomhole told reporters.
"Taking into account the intervention of the court and the reduction in price announced today (Monday) by the government, we have decided to suspend the strike," said Oshiomhole after a meeting of his Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and civil society groups.
Earlier, the government made an 11th-hour bid to avert the strike, which had already been deemed illegal by a court ruling.
The government ordered a temporary increase in fuel subsidies and an immediate cut in pump prices on the eve of a threatened nationwide protest.
The decision marked a major climbdown for President Olusegun Obasanjo, who had previously insisted his deregulation policy was irreversible, but it was not immediately clear whether he had done enough to halt the stoppage.
Deputy Senate president Ibrahim Mantu said that petrol and diesel prices would be cut from 52 to 49 naira per litre, with immediate effect, for an eight week experimental period running until mid-January.
"With this we can appeal to Nigerians to have a sense of relief and to thank their God that the mother of all strikes has been averted," he told reporters.
Mantu heads a committee set up to find a way of cushioning Nigerian consumers from the effects of high fuel prices. He said Obasanjo had given them the go-ahead to act with the state fuel price regulator to cut prices.
Labour unions and civil rights groups has pledged to paralyse Nigeria's economy from midnight unless the government agrees to reverse a September 23 price hike and return the price of petrol and diesel to 44 naira (32 cents) per litre.
Oshiomhole had said in a statement late Sunday the strike would go ahead despite the slight reduction in the price of kerosene, used as cooking fuel, announced Friday.
But on Monday he said: "We will go to the appeal court on Wednesday and argue in court that the rule of law must be obeyed. We will make the court realise that justice and not judgment must be passed in the interest of the people."
Internationally, the threatened strike has raised concerns that Nigeria's crude oil exports -- the sixth largest in the world -- could be disrupted, increasing upward pressure on already volatile world prices.
Peter Akpatasan, president of the blue-collar oil union NUPENG, welcomed the price cut. "It think it's an improvement on where we were before. We will meet today and make a formal announcement," he told reporters.
Although previous strikes have not disrupted Nigeria's daily output of some 2.5 million barrels of crude oil, the world market is already nervous about the effects a nationwide strike could have on Africa's biggest exporter of oil.
Despite being the largest oil producer in Africa, Nigeria relies on expensive imports of refined petrol, diesel and kerosene and its impoverished 130-million people suffer from fuel droughts and rising prices.
In October last year Obasanjo announced a plan to slash subsidies on petrol and diesel and to drop them altogether on kerosene, which the poorest Nigerians use to light their homes and to cook.
On Friday, in the first sign he was backing down in the face of the latest in a series of national fuel strikes, the president announced that kerosene would again be subsidised by 10 naira per litre, bringing it down to 52 naira.
Mantu said that Monday's announcement would go into immediate effect, but labour leaders warned that they would be checking station forecourts to see if private marketers had obeyed the directive.
11/15/2004 - 18:41 GMT - AFP