FG Advised to Stop Justifying Hike in Petrol Price
Michael Olugbode in Abuja
The federal government has been advised to stop justifying recent increase in pump price of petrol, but instead put up strategies to reduce the sufferings of the masses.
The advice was given yesterday by the Centre for Social Justice, Abuja in a statement.
The statement read: “To reduce the sufferings of the masses, the federal government must continue to find solutions to reduce the price of PMS. One of such effective solutions is for the FG through the NNPCL and Dangote Refineries to consider divesting a good part of its profits from all other bye products of crude oil as subsidy relief on petrol.
“It is a known fact that there are other commercial products that could be gotten from crude oil. Beyond PMS, Wikipedia reports that up to 6,000 products can be gotten from crude oil. Five major products beyond PMS are jet oil, diesel, liquified natural gas, petroleum lubricants used for engine oil, grease, petroleum jelly, etc. The profits made from the sales of these crude oil bye products should be ploughed back to PMS as subsidy.”
The statement added that: “The target should be to reduce the current PMS price to at least 50 per cent while maintaining profit from other bye products. Available research shows that some companies like Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait National Petroleum Company are already implementing this subsidy measure on PMS.”
The NGO insisted that: “Rather than Mr. President maintaining its tough stance on the increase in the price of petrol, the above measure should be given due consideration,” stating further that: “Nigerians have also placed so much expectations on Dangote Refineries Limited to reduce the burden of high fuel cost, the DRL should be magnanimous enough to fit into the expectation of Nigerians just like its counterpart in the aviation industry, Allen Onyema who magnanimously crashed the price of international flight.
“The DRL should consider subsidising the cost of PMS by leveraging on profits generated from the other bye products of crude oil. By doing so, the company would continue to earn the good will and massive support it has been getting from Nigerians.”
It advised that the company could regard this as its own corporate social responsibility to Nigerians.
It said: “For any subsidy regime to thrive, the government must take practical measures to ensure that the independent petroleum marketers sell PMS at the approved subsidy rate irrespective of where they chose to source their products from. The Independent petroleum marketers have taken advantage of the ineptitude of NNPCL in the past, to manipulate the supply and price of PMS. The major clamor for subsidy removal in the past, was as a result of diversion of subsidized petroleum products to neighboring countries where these products were sold at higher rates at the detriment of the product availability in Nigeria. Under a renewed subsidy regime, the sharp practices of the independent petroleum marketers must be curtailed by the government and where necessary the licenses of errant marketers should be revoked.”
The NGO further said: “The president should also consider the fact that the demands of Nigerians to end hunger and return petrol subsidy is justifiable given that the national minimum wage in Nigeria is one of the lowest in the world. Nigeria is also experiencing a low or under-employment crisis coupled with hyper-inflation which the majority of the population do not have the earning capacity to deal with. Hence subsidy on PMS is imperative.
