…FG requests N465bn supplementary budget for subsidy - Buhari Intervenes

AS the fuel crisis continues to bite hard on Nigerians across the country despite assurances of availability by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corpo­ration (NNPC), the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has charged President Muham­madu Buhari to wade into the matter to rescue the poor mass­es from the unending crisis.

This is coming as President Muhammadu Buhari yester­day sought Senate approval for N465 billion supplemen­tary budget to cover N413 bil­lion ($2.1 billion) of debt owed to fuel importers under a sub­sidy scheme.

Buhari says N465.64 billion supplementary budget will cover subsidies, funding for the military operation Lafiya Dole against the Islamist insur­gency in the northeast, prisoner rations and pay for out-going and incoming legislative aides.

Observers believe the supple­mentary budget will be key to resolving fresh fuel shortages and closing the book on debts still owed to importers from 2014 and this year.

But the NLC President, Ayu­ba Wabba, yesterday expressed the congress’s consternation on the continuing incidences of fuel scarcity resulting in skyrocketing prices and long queues spreading to different parts of the country.

“We note that this is happen­ing despite assurances from government and its agencies that there is enough fuel be­ing distributed around the country and that citizens need not go into panic buying,” he has stated. He noted that, that the situation has not vis­ibly improved after more than 72 hours of such assurance means that the marketers and other groups that have held the country hostage over the years for their unearned profiteering from the petroleum sector are still determined to continue as if it is business as usual.

The NLC President said such unpatriotic act from those considered as cabals in the oil sector is completely unaccept­able as Nigerians are forced to go through the perennial hard­ship especially towards the end of the year.

Wabba lamented that Nige­rians now have to cough out between N130 and N300 per litre of petrol in different parts of the country, instead of the official N87 per litre price, adding that this shows a clear determination of the unpatri­otic operators in the petroleum sector working to circum­vent government regulation through blackmail and other unorthodox methods.

According to Wabba, “gov­ernment needs to urgently ad­dress the issue of hoarding by marketers and others who have continued to canvass for so-called deregulation in which government would hands-off regulating prices of petroleum products. Given that petro­leum products continue to be the artery of our economy, in­deed our existence, it is naive and foolhardy to expect that government will hands-off the downstream sector and allow for those whose sole purpose is profit-making to take over full control of determining the prices of these critical prod­ucts.” Stressing that the ongo­ing crisis is a deliberate strat­egy by the cabals, the NLC President further mandated the Buhari government to take prompt action to stop the suf­fering of the people.

Meanwhile, the crisis in Lagos has forced most of the commercial vehicles to keep off the roads thereby subject­ing commuters in the state to untold hardships.