Report was earlier made yesterday that the price of fuel has been raised (not by Zeewade.com). However, the Federal Government has denied any increase in the pump price of Premium Motor Spirit, also known as petrol, at the pump.
In a statement released by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Minister of State for Petroleum Resources through his media aide, Horatius Egua, in Abuja on Friday, it stated that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (ret.), has not authorized any price increases for petrol.
In his statement, he said “President Muhammadu Buhari has not approved any increase in the price of PMS or any other petroleum product for that matter.
“There is no reason for President Muhammadu Buhari to renege on his earlier promise not to approve any increase in the price of PMS at this time.
“Mr. President is sensitive to the plights of the ordinary Nigerian and has said repeatedly that he understands the challenges of the ordinary Nigerian and would not want to cause untold hardship for the electorate.”
He further stated that, “The government will not approve any increase (in the price) of PMS secretly without due consultation with the relevant stakeholders. The President has not directed the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority or any agency for that matter to increase the price of fuel.
“This is not the time for any increase in the pump price of PMS.”
“I appeal to Nigerians to remain calm and law-abiding as the government is working hard to bring normalcy to fuel supply and distribution in the country,” Sylva said.
The minister’s view, however, has raised many eyebrows because oil marketers had previously acknowledged the N10 price rise for gasoline and claimed that this was one of the factors behind major marketers’ present distribution of the good at higher prices.
MOMAN has expressed its sympathy for Nigerians in a statement on Friday night on the difficulties they were having purchasing gasoline at filling stations all throughout the nation.
It said, “These queues are caused by exceptional high demand and bottlenecks in the distribution chain. The major cause is the shortage and high (US dollar) costs of daughter vessels for ferrying product from mother vessels to depots along the coast.
“Next is inadequate number of trucks to meet the demand to deliver products from depots to filling stations nationwide. These high logistics and exchange rate costs continue to put pressure on prices at the pumps.
“Over the past three months, staff (members) and management of MOMAN companies have worked diligently at depots and filling stations to relieve the stress faced by customers through the Christmas and New Year period.
“Our members have again agreed to extend depot loading hours as well as keep strategically situated service stations open for long hours to ease access to fuel for our customers.”
“A final resolution to these challenges will be the full deregulation of the petroleum downstream sector to encourage the liberalisation of supply and long-term investment distribution assets. We urge the government to work towards this end goal,” the body stated.
While the extreme scarcity of the product persisted across the nation, traders said on Friday that the Federal Government may have started the progressive elimination of petrol subsidies.
According to reports, the government had to hike the price of petrol at the pump from N165 per litre to N175 per litre a few months ago, and then again on Thursday to N185 per litre as part of efforts to gradually phase away fuel subsidies.
Despite the fact that these were the government-approved rates, marketers hardly ever distributed the commodity at these prices because it was difficult for customers to obtain the product.
It is unclear when the long queues will reduce in the filling station around the country s there seems to not be an end in sight to fuel scarcity.
