The Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, has denied news reports that the Federal Government was planning to jack up the pump price of petrol, higher than the official N145 per litre.
Kachikwu, briefing newsmen in Abuja on Friday, disclosed that the mandate of the President is to ensure that N145 petrol pump price is maintained, insisting that there is no plan to increase the pump price.
“There are social media commentaries implying that when we met with the Committee set up by the Senate President to review the causative factors of the fuel scarcity and find solutions, there was a statement credited to me that said that price might be increased to N180,” he stated.
“No such statement was made; no such plan is intended. I needed to clarify this, because sometimes, some of these rumour mongering all add to the difficulties NNPC had in terms of being able to control price speculation.
“The President’s mandate on this issue is very specific: ‘we are not increasing price from N145’.”
Kachikwu explained that the essence of the meeting on Thursday and other meetings still going on was to find mechanisms to ensure that fuel queues do not come back to Nigeria.
“Part of the meeting is also to ensure the wetting of all the stations so that product is available at every time for Nigerians,” he continued.
“Also, that private marketers that had pulled out from participation, that we deal with their problems, so that they can participate effectively in the supply of petroleum products in the country, all within the parameters of N145 per litre pump price.
“I thought we should make this very clear. This is not a matter for speculation; anybody who does speculation on it is not being helpful to Nigerians; that they have already gone through a very difficult Christmas period.
“We are working night and day to try and find solutions. I have reacted to this, I think it is very important to make this go universally clear.
“We are actually looking at steps for those who have breached these processes, what we can do to penalise them and also set very stiff penalties for those who go to sell above N145.
“I want to make that very clear, there is no discussed intended price increase issue; price is N145 per litre at the pump price; it remains that; nothing has changed; there is no mandate to increase that.
“But we are working very hard, to see that, working with those price parameters, we can provide Nigerians with refined petroleum products all the time, avoid fuel queues and ensure that our business partners in the private sector participate actively.
“Some recalcitrant individuals sold above that and that is why the law needs to go after them. There is no authorization to modulate outside the N135–N145 bracket. Nobody is free to set price above that.”
- Thewill