Dahunsi mayowa
Fuel Crisis : NEITI Condemns Subsidy .
The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiatives(NEITI), an agency of the Federal Government, on Monda, blamed the over three-week scarcity of Fuel on the continued subsidy on PMS.
The agency went further in its explanation that the solution to the country’s prolonged fuel scarcity was to put an end to subsidy regime as canvassed by stakeholders including the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, but was quick to state that the Federal Government had its reasons for retaining it.
As at Monday the ex-depot price of petrol by private tank farm owners had risen to N180/litre.
The approved ex-depot price for petrol is between N145 – N148/litre. The price by private tank farm owners was hiked to between N162 – N167/litre, but on Monday it jumped to N180/litre.
As the crisis in the downstream oil sector continued on Monday, queues for petrol by motorists in the few filling stations that had products, grew worse, with many fuel users spending several hours under the sun just to buy PMS.
Commenting on the petrol crisis at a briefing in Abuja, the Executive Secretary, NEITI, Orji Ogbonnaya-Orji, described the current petrol scarcity as a symptom, while the main disease was the subsidy.
He said, “At the moment, the NNPC and the Nigeria Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority are seriously working hard to restore normalcy.”
