No plan to hike fuel price, says NNPC

Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Maikanti Baru, has said that the Federal Government was not contemplating any further increment in the pump price of premium motor spirit (PMS) also known as petrol.
The NNPC group managing director and the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachukwu, yesterday held a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa, Abuja.
The meeting between the president and chief executives of the nation’s oil industry, New Telegraph gathered, is not unconnected with the recent call by stakeholders for further increment in the pump of petrol considering the continued scarcity of foreign exchange, which is said to be making it difficult to import the product.
The Federal Government liberalised the downstream sector of the petroleum industry on May 11, and announced an increase in the pump price of petrol from N86 and N86.5 per litre to between N135 and N145 per litre.
Baru, who was accosted by State House Correspondents to comment on the rumoured plan by government to increase petrol price after the meeting with the president, which lasted for about one hour, said, “there is nothing like that”. He referred reporters to make inquiries from the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA).
“Go to PPPRA,” he noted. But the PPPRA said it has no plan to increase the pump price of petrol. According to the agency, the management of the PPPRA has not, in any way, discussed any increase on the fuel pump price. Spokesman for the PPPRA, Mr. Lanre Oladele, did not pick his phone to get the agency’s clarification on the rumoured new price hike.
He did not also respond to a text message sent to his cell phone. A source at the corporation, however, said that the NNPC GMD is only trying to use the agency as a “scapegoat.”
The PPPRA, he said, is “an agency with that responsibility (pricing modulation), but everyone knows that the decision to hike or reduce the prices of petroleum products is a political one that squarely lies with the president.
“We can only do that only when the coast is clear form Aso Rock.” Former GMDs of the NNPC met at the weekend with the management of the corporation where they raised concerns on the current pump price of N145, arguing that it was not commensurate with the liberalisation policy.
The meeting of the ex- GMDs, which was at the instance of Baru, insisted that the flexible foreign exchange rate policy and other price determining components such as crude cost, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) charges, among others were making importation impossible. Our correspondent learnt that Buhari is under intense pressure to allow for further increase in the price of petrol as the only means to guarantee availability of the product.
Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Senate, Aliyu Sabi (APC, Niger North), yesterday hit hard on the NNPC boss and his predecessors, describing them as enemies of Nigeria.
At an interactive session with journalists in Abuja yesterday, Sabi cautioned the Federal Government from implementing such advice when Nigerians were groaning under severe economic hardship.
The lawmaker described the GMD and his predecessors as enemies of Nigerians and the present government by giving what he considered a wrong advice when Nigerians were undergoing severe economic pains.
He said: “I read the newspaper reports just this morning and I was disturbed, worried and I think for all intent and purpose, I am very much disappointed in the former NNPC GMDs over their call for fuel price increase, having at one time or the other, contributed to bringing us to where we are today.
“The NNPC as an institution was expectedly to be the life wire of this nation. As we have all known, refineries that we have in Nigeria have not been functional because if they have been functional and if that institution had been up and doing in tandem with its peers in other countries that have similar resource endowment like ours under the directorship of these former GMDs, we wouldn’t have been in this mess.
“Let me make it very clear that all of them that are speaking do not have the moral standpoint to even advise us on what to do because they had a hand in it and I cannot see how you can solve a problem under the same condition that created it.
They are more or less acting as enemies of the people and even the government they are advising. “I think Albert Einstein is quoted to have said doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity. Are we expecting these people’s advice to change the narratives? As far as I am concerned, maybe they are sent to destroy this government and, as far as I am concerned, we would not allow them to do that.”