January 19, 2015 – The Lagos State House of Assembly believes that reduction of fuel price from N97 to N87 per litre by the Federal Government as a Greek gift.
Deputy Speaker of the Assembly, Hon. Musibau Taiwo Kolawole, who is representing Ajeromi/Ifelodun Constituency 1 said that the price of crude oil has been falling internationally which led to the fall in the price of petroleum, saying that the Federal Government should tell Nigerians why only N10 was removed from the price of fuel, when the price of crude oil fell from about $100 to about $45 per barrel.
According to him, “the price of a litre of petroleum should to be about N40 per litre. This is not how to run a nation, you cannot even run a company like this, it is wrong. The Federal Government needs to come up with analysis to show that the difference is only N10. They are very corrupt, we can no longer accommodate corruption in the system.
“Nobody is doing anything special here because the reduction should be based on the fact that there is a drop in oil price. Unfortunately, we import the refined products and I don’t know why people are celebrating this because they are still stealing our money.
“A sensible and reasonable government would know that any closed door would always open. Any unrealistic price would be checked later and it should have been the basis of our planning before now”, he said.
His counterpart from Eti Osa Constituency 2, Hon. Gbolahan Yishawu stated that the N10 is basically for political gains.
“Now that a barrel of crude oil is $49, a litre of petrol should not be more than N27 or N30. There is still some level of mismanagement in the system and it is not acceptable. Now that the oil price is falling, where will the government find money to sustain the job created after the removal of fuel subsidy under its SURE-P Project.
“We all know all that the scale of businesses that create jobs all over the world are micro, small and medium scale industries and the things that sustain such businesses are electricity, security and access to fund.
“The Federal Government has failed in that aspect, they are now giving handouts to people. The jobs they provide are not real jobs”.
Yishawu added that Nigeria needs a serious set of minds with sincerity of purpose that have the plan to proffer solutions to the nation’s numerous problems.
“We need creative minds not people that would tell you the problems facing the country has been there before they assumed office and that somebody did not buy riffles for the military. Those are mere excuses,” he said.
