Ignore World Bank’s Advice To Increase Petrol Pump Price To N750, NLC Tells FG

The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has urged the Federal Government  to ignore and disregard the advice given by the World Bank that  the pump price of Premium Motor Spirit should be increased to N750 per litre.

Team@orientactualmags.com learned that Head of Information, Benson Upah told reporters  that any further increase in the pump price of petrol would lead to anarchy in the country.

He, therefore called on the government to reject the proposal of the World Bank that petrol should sell at about N750/litre.

Recall that  oil marketers  had noted that the pump price of PMS ought to be around N1,000/litre if the government  had not subsidized the petroleum  product, the federal government had however denied this claim  on Thursday.

The World Bank had also on Wednesday, asked the Federal Government to stop the subsidy payment on petrol and raise the pump price to N750/litre.

Upah has however described the World Bank as a predatory institution that does not care about the welfare of Nigerians, submitting that the initial increment in the pump price of PMS had caused enough problems in the country.

‘The World Bank is globalist north in thoughts and actions and it has little or no consideration for the global south. It is a predatory institution that the global north uses to justify its crimes against the south.

It is almost single-handedly responsible for the ruination of the economies of countries of the global south for which it prescribes one solution for all ailments.

It does not care what happens to Nigeria or Nigerians so it could from its perch in Washington say whatever it likes or push around our leaders like house-helps.

The truth, however, remains that the present regime of the pump price of PMS has all but destroyed the country. To now ask the government to raise it to N750/litre is to invite anarchy upon the land.

The World Bank is so hypocritical, it fails to see the nexus between price and capacity. The minimum wage in Nigeria for a privileged few is N30,000. The same minimum wage in the United States where the law is enforced is N1.5m.

In the light of this, if the government knows what is good for it, it should ignore the World Bank but must remain committed to fighting inherent corruption in the downstream sector of the petroleum industry. It must also cut down the high cost of governance’ he said.

Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, also submitted during an interview with Channels Television on Thursday that ‘subsidy is gone for good’.

 ‘Subsidy is gone, and the President told Nigerians on his first day in office that there won’t be subsidy (on petrol). It is because subsidy has gone that we have so much money available for the government to do so many things. Of course, it’s never enough, but fuel subsidy is gone and it’s gone for good.

There are instances where the government needs to come in to see that things don’t go so bad. That’s the responsibility of the government. Every rule will also have its self-adjusting mechanism, but I can assure Nigerians that the subsidy is gone.

If you look at the monies accruing to the Federation Account and the kind of money the states are receiving, you would know that everybody desires that subsidy should go. What do we do with that subsidy, I think, is the next question. We need to scrutinize that so that Nigerians would benefit from the subsidy that has been taken away. Subsidy is gone’ he said-Team@orientactualmags.com
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