By Akinwale Kasali
Opposition Party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has condemned and vehemently rejects the fresh increase in the price of fuel to N151 per liter and electricity tariff from N30.23 to N66 per kwh under the All Progressives Congress, APC, led President Muhammadu Buhari Government. The party described the hikes as callous, cruel and punishing.
In a statement its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbodiyan demanded an immediate reversal of the prices to avert a national crisis.
Ologbodiyan stressed that the increase will result in an upsurge in costs of goods and services and worsen the biting hardship being faced by Nigerians, who are already impoverished and overburdened by the APC-imposed high cost of living in the last five years.
“Our party asserts that by increasing the price of fuel from the N87 per litre it sold under the PDP to an excruciating N151 while at the same time, allowing the hike in electricity tariff from N30.23 per kwh to over N66, the APC has left no one in doubt that its agenda is to inflict pain and hardship on Nigerians to satisfy their selfish interests.
“The unjustifiable increase in the price of these essential supplies, coming barely a week after the APC brazenly posted a support for fuel price hike, while attempting to rationalize the excruciating hardship being suffered by Nigerians under the Buhari administration, has further confirmed that the APC is at the center of the harsh policies of the Buhari Presidency.
“It is distressing that the APC administration increased the cost of essential commodities at the time the leadership of other countries are offering palliatives to their citizens to cushion the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is instructive to add that our nation is doomed under the APC watch.
“We know that the APC is an unfeeling party but it is indeed shocking that it could go to the extent of approving such a hike at this trying time, when many Nigerians are struggling to afford staple foods and other necessities of life.
“Our party challenges the APC and the Buhari administration to publish the parameters with which it arrived at the increase of fuel price to N151 per liter given that with the prevailing values in the international market, the appropriate price template for domestic pump price in Nigeria ought not to be above N100 per liter.
“Our party further challenges the APC-led Federal Government to publish details of its sleazy and over-bloated oil subsidy regime, including the involvement of APC interests in the claimed under-recovery for unnamed West African countries, running into trillions of naira, while Nigerians are made to bear the burden of high fuel costs.
The statement added that, moreover, the APC and its government have failed to allow an open investigation into allegations of fuel price overcharge as well as the fraudulent subsidy regime through which over N14 trillion had allegedly been frittered by unscrupulous individuals in the APC.
“Our fear is that the APC is pushing Nigerians to the wall with its obnoxious and anti-people proclivities and we caution that nobody should misinterpret the peaceful and law-abiding nature of Nigerians as a sign of weakness.
“Our party, therefore, restates our call on the National Assembly to save the nation by calling the APC and its administration to order before they plunge our nation into chaos”, Ologbodiyan stressed.
The Chairman of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Ogun State Branch, Chief Adegbite, has also lamented the increase in the tariff of electrify, saying it would spike an increase in the prices of good stuff and all goods.
