‘Remove Fuel Subsidy, Build Coastal Refineries’

Executive Director of an NGO, Conscience Nigeria, Mr Tosin Adeyanju, has called on the Federal Government to build coastal refineries in the country.

Adeyanju said that the refineries, when built, would address challenges of incessant fuel scarcity.

He said the refineries would help to maintain a uniformed pricing of petroleum products.

Adeyanju said the NGO, after monitoring the price of petrol across the country in the last six months, discovered that it was not uniform.

“Our NGO and a coalition of civil society groups conducted the survey on price of fuel across the country; we discovered that fuel is sold at N97 per litre, mostly in Abuja and Lagos. “Immediately you leave Abuja towards the airport road or Nyanya Maraba road, fuel is sold at 120 and above, so also in Kaduna, Sokoto, Kano, Enugu and other states,” he said.

The director suggested that government should remove oil subsidy and allocate the money to critical areas of the economy that would create jobs to the unemployed youths.

He said government could have invested the over trillion naira it budgetted in 2012 for oil subsidy in improving power supply.

According to Adeyanju, with deregulation, private refineries would spring up in different parts of the country much earlier than anticipated.

He said the NGO would collaborate with other civil society organisations to sensitise Nigerians to understand the need for removal of fuel subsidy.

Adeyanju urged government to implement a transparent system for redirecting and monitoring funds from the subsidy, so that Nigerians could scrutinise the expenditure.

Rivers State Governor, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Amaechi (right), in a handshake with the State Chief Judge, Justice Iche Ndu, during the Rededication Service for the 2012/2013 Legal Year in Port Harcourt, last Friday. With them is wife of the Chief Judge, Ngozi.