The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described the new pump prices of petrol as announced Tuesday by the federal government as a disappointing anti-climax and continuation of the All Progressives Congress (APC) government by “deception.”
The PDP in a statement yesterday by its national publicity secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh said beside its “deceptive element” the reduction in the N87 per litre pump price to N86 and N86.50 per litre for the retail outlets of the NNPC and retail outlets of private business concerns respectively offered too little to cheer about.
The PDP said Nigerians should now ask the government what has changed in their calculations that they could not significantly reduce the pump price.
It said that never again should Nigerians allow “desperate men to use lies, propaganda and intimidations” to win elections and get to power, only for them to “fumble and muddle” through governance, insisting that the government must explain its position on the subsidy issue.
“After heightened expectations occasioned by the promise to review the N87 per litre pump price of petrol made by the administration amid crippling scarcity of the product during the Christmas season, the announcement of this tokenism has come as a disappointing anti-climax, considering that only in January this year, the PDP federal government reduced the pump price from N97 to N87 per litre.
“That was done in the wake of the fall in the price of crude oil to between $42.65 and $50 per barrel. The PDP government then, in reaction to the development in the global oil market, revised its pricing template that brought down the pump price by N2.84 more than the N87 fixed as the pump price of petrol. The implication was that the federal government was still subsidising the N87 price by N2.84 per every litre of the product,” the opposition party said.
The party said: “The APC-controlled federal government, consequent upon stepping in the saddle on May 29, this year, considered the market and decided through a supplementary appropriation to pay N413 billion as subsidy to petroleum marketers. In announcing the new pump prices, the APC federal government claimed that the subsidy element has been removed.
“The question is; how much were we paying for subsidy when the pump price was N87? Has this marginal reduction now knocked off completely the huge subsidy paid at N87 per litre or should it not have only further reduced the size of the subsidy?”
