PDP Rejects N108 Ex-Depot Fuel Price, As Oil Marketers Say New Price Won’t Be Immediate

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP has rejected the Federal Government’s pinch in ex-depot price of fuel to N108 litre, insisting on a new pricing template that must accommodate a pump price of between N60 to N70 per liter to reflect the crash in the price of crude oil and petroleum products in the international market.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation NNPC had on Wednesday night announced a reduction in the ex-depot price of petrol from N113.28 per litre to N108 per litre.

The ex-depot price is the price at which the product is sold to marketers at the depots.

It said the price reduction took effect across all its products loading facilities as well as in its throughput operations.

But, in a statement signed by the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the party described the N108 ex-depot price ‘as fraudulent and a far cry from the appropriate pump price template that should not exceed N70 given the prevailing situation in the international oil market’.

The party accused the Federal Government of shrouding the indices and parameters it is using in determining domestic prices of petroleum products in secrecy. “Such parameters obviously cannot be in tandem with the appropriate situation in the global industry,” it said.

The PDP said the All Progressive Congress, APC-led federal government had continued to shortchange unsuspecting Nigerians since the beginning of the year by refusing to end its corrupt interference and allow market forces determine pump price of fuel to reflect current global prices.

It further stated: “Our party insists that the Federal Government has no reason to continue to fleece Nigerians particularly in the face of worsening economic crisis occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic which it had also failed to effectively handle.

“The PDP demands that the APC-Federal Government should immediately reduce both the ex-depot and pump price as well as surrender the billion of naira accruable as overcharge from the inappropriate fuel pricing since the crash in crude oil price and channel the funds as palliatives to Nigerians.”

The PDP further charges ‘the NNPC not to waste further time in addressing Nigerians on its confession of sleazy and over-bloated oil subsidy regime in the last five years which included a hazy under-recovery for unnamed West African countries, running into trillions of naira’.

“Indeed, Nigerians must not continued to be fleeced with high fuel prices while stolen subsidy and accruable overcharges are looted by a few individuals operating as a cabal in the APC-led administration,” it concluded.

Meanwhile, oil marketers told The Punch, the reduction was welcomed but added that it would not immediately reflect on the current pump price of petrol.

The Vice President, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Abubakar Maigandi, said marketers would have to sell their old stock at the current N125 per litre price before effecting any reduction.

He also noted that the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA had yet to make any statement on the cost of the commodity, adding that it was not the duty of marketers to announce a new price.