BY OUR REPORTER
The Trade Union Congress (TUC) on Thursday demanded the return of petrol price regime to what it was in June 2023. TUC made the demand through its President, Festus Osifo, during a press briefing in Abuja.
“We want the price of the product to go below what it was before; not just reverse to what it was before but to go below,” he said.
He asked the government to specially intervene in the sector by giving foreign exchange to Dangote Refinery at $1/N1,000 and not at the current rate of over 1/N1,600 exchange rate of the Naira to the Dollar so as to crash petrol price.
“The solution we are proposing if implemented will take us to the price we had as of June last year,” Osifo stated. He argued that “there is no government in the world that doesn’t intervene in its critical sectors,” and that the Federal Government “shouldn’t leave it (the oil sector) to the vagaries and gyration of our naira”.
Since May 2023, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has increased the pump prices of petrol from ₦184 in Lagos to ₦998. The price per litre of petrol was around ₦450 in Lagos as of June 2023.
The TUC leader on Thursday stressed that availability, affordability and accessibility of petrol for all Nigerians should be the focus of all economic policies, saying that the commodity is essential for all Nigerian households, even those without a second-hand value car.
“We want the Federal Government to, through Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), give all marketers licenses to lift petrol from the Dangote Refinery.”
Osifo said the NNPCL should source refined petrol from other places if the Dangote Refinery cannot meet the current daily demands of Nigerians.
“If it is not available, it is a problem. If, for example, the production from Dangote Refinery is less than 15 million litres per day, it is not sufficient.
“So, while efforts are being made to ramp up production from Dangote Refinery, what we are demanding is that we should look for every other means as we are ramping up production, we should source for that difference and bring it in for a while until Dangote can get to that level where the production is sufficient to get to all nooks and crannies of Nigeria. For us, that is key because it will address the issue of availability,” the TUC boss stated.
