Subsidy: Use N500b to fix refineries, Nigerians suffering
A Civil Society Organization, ‘One Love Foundation’, OLF, has called on President Bola Tinubu, to urgently fix refineries with the N500 billion saved from subsidy removal from May 29, 2023.
The Founder and President, OLF, Chief Patrick Eholor, said the panacea to the current harrowing pain Nigerians and their livelihood is feeling remains fixing of the refineries.
According to Eholor, the fixing of the refineries should be done within three months.
He said: “These are critical times Nigerians are facing and we need to be aggressive and most especially in whatever method we are doing to ease off the plight of the people, the government has to be fast about it.
“As it appears now, it seems like the country now solely depends on fuel and should fuel skyrocket then every other commodity prices will go up automatically.
“Haven explained that, life in Nigeria became difficult right from the time Mr President Tinubu was sworn-in and he verbally removed fuel subsidy, I think it will be unreasonable for him to use the N500 billion for something else, pump price of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, now is N600 and above, in order to ease the plight of the citizen, it is best he fix our refineries as quickly as possible.
“The situation we are now the Tinubu-led administration should declare state of emergency on the fixing of the refineries.
“He should pump in much money as needed to reactivate them, if not all refineries but most of them. This to a large extent will ease off the burden of Nigerians.
“At most he should use at least three months to fix the refineries because of the urgency and suffering of Nigerians because there is money in this country, if more money is pumped into fixing them the faster the completion.”
However, he said it is not really a welcomed option to utilize the N500 billion for modular refineries based on a Public Private Partnership, PPP, arrangement.
“Well, I will not advise the Federal Government to key into this totally, they may want to do this in two refineries only, this is Africa especially Nigeria, anything that has to do with privatisation will cost more money at the end because the private companies would want to have it all at the detriment of the end users.
“So It is best for everything is being done by the government, so at the end the Federal Government can regulate the price”, he added.
Views: 19