Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, said, yesterday, that liberalising the oil sector will force the pump price of fuel, which currently trades at N145, to drop in six months.
Kachikwu said this when he appeared as a guest on Sunrise Daily, a breakfast programme
on Channels Television.
“We mean well and Nigerians should please trust us. Give us a chance and you will be surprised what will become of your PMS price over the next six to eight months.
“As it gets better, it will get to a point where the market will stabilise in terms of supply and we will begin to pull back a bit in terms of determinants for pricing.”
The minister also said the authorities had done all they could to end the ongoing scarcity, and just could not provide foreign exchange for the importation of fuel.
“You don’t give what you don’t have. We want Nigerians to understand that we feel the pain, and we have tried to avoid it since I came in October 2015.
“We first went to the issue of the subsidies that we inherited which, by the way, were based on 50 to 55 million litres consumption and we said the number looked bloated. So, we did an experiment and came to a conclusion that this country doesn’t consume more than 45 million litres a day.
“Then, we came to a second point and said we are not even going to have subsidy again. We are going to exit it because there was just too much fraud involved in it.
“We have struggled; queues continue to go and come back. And, it will continue to happen unless we address the issues.
“If you free up Nigerians to find sources of funds, they will find those secondary funds. They will import the product; the burden on the NNPC will reduce and the country will have peace and subsidy will go away permanently,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has convened an emergency meeting of its highest organ, the National Executive Committee (NEC) for Abuja today.
This was even as the NLC alerted its affiliates, state councils and civil society allies to commence mobilisation for a major strike.
The NLC insisted that the unilateral increase in prices of petroleum products by the government represents the height of insensitivity and impunity and shall be resisted.
NLC President, Ayuba Wabba said the congress has summoned NEC for a meeting “to ratify the next line of action,” which may not rule out a repeat of the showdown experienced in January 2012 in rejection of the last pump price by the last administration.
“With the imposition on the citizenry of criminal and unjustifiable electricity tariff and resultant darkness and other economic challenges brought on by the devaluation of the Naira and spiraling inflation, the least one had expected at this point in time was another policy measure that would further make life more miserable for the ordinary Nigerian”, the Congress said. A rights group, Campaign for Democracy (CD) has given the Federal Government 72 hours to revert to the old pump price of N86.50 per liter or they will mobilise Nigerians for protest against the new fuel price.
In a statement signed by CD National Publicity Secretary, Dede Uzo A. Uzo and made available to Daily Sun the group said, “Nigerians are suffering and undergoing hardship.
This is not the change we voted for, things must changed for better and not for worst. CD gives federal government 72 hours to revert to the original pump price.
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