Pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere has criticised the hike in petrol price, saying it would be compounding challenges Nigerians currently faced.
Urging the Federal Government to immediately order a reversal of the price increase, Afenifere said that failure to do so contradicted earlier assurances by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that Nigerians’ pains would soon be over.
It says the government must reverse the announced increment.
Afenifere, in a statement by its spokesman, Mr Jare Ajayi, , on Wednesday, pointed out that Nigerians were currently going through a lot of challenges as a result biting socio-economic crunch and the attendant hardships.
Ajayi said: “It is therefore a wrong time to come up with any policy that will increase the undesirable challenges Nigerians are going through presently. Failure by the NNPCL to reverse the latest increment in fuel price will rub off negatively on some policies of Tinubu administration to ease things for the citizens. Policies such as the Students Loan Scheme and Consumer Credit Scheme that are just taking off.”
The NNPCL, on Tuesday, September 3, 2024 raised the pump price of petrol to N897 per litre from the official price of N617.
Afenifere argued that it is curious that an organization that declared a profit running into trillions of Naira could, almost in the same breath, claim that it is indebted to the tune of nearly seven billion US dollars: “Why not pay off the debt from the available fund before declaring it as profit?
“It is a common knowledge that the cost and availability of energy such as petrol, gas, electricity, diesel and kerosine are major factors not only in production and services but also on the quality of well-being that Nigerians can enjoy. Hikes in prices of these energy sources have astronomically increased the costs of services and commodities, reduced the disposal incomes of average Nigerians and heighten their health risk.
“The combination of all these are making a daily living an onerous task for the majority of the citizens. Considering the fact that millions of the Nigerians had been described as being ‘multi-dimensionally poor’, the recent hike in costs of fuel and electricity are uploading the number of people in that category phenomenally.”
