Fuel/Electricity: Nigerians Can’t Survive Buhari’s Price Hikes -PDP

… Opposition Party Demands Return To Old Prices

Nigerians can not survive the “obnoxious” increase in the cost of fuel and electricity by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said on Tuesday.

The party, which stated this in a statement by its Spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, said that the administration had impoverished Nigerians through its policies .

According to Ologbondiyan, the attempt by Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, to justify the hike in the cost of fuel from N87 per litre under the PDP to N162, as well as electricity tariff from N30.23 per kwh to over N66kw/h, was “yet another daring and intolerable affront to the Nigerian citizenry, who have summarily rejected the increases.”

He noted that the main opposition party was standing with Nigerians in insisting that there was no way “our compatriots can survive a N162 per liter fuel price and a N66 per kw/h of electricity in a country which, in the last five years, ranked as poverty capital of the world, with a frightening 23 percent unemployment rate; where over 90 million citizens live in abject poverty and many more living on less than N500 a day.”

The PDP spokesman said: “Indeed, we find it very inconceivable that after the federal government, through the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Farouq, confirmed that 90 million Nigerians are living in poverty, it still went ahead to increase the cost of essential commodities that drive our economy.

“Nigerians are already in trepidation that the excruciating price increase is a sudden death sentence on many citizens, particularly those living below poverty line, as they cannot survive under a worsened economic situation.

“Moreover, with a N30,000 federal monthly minimum wage, which represents a N1,000 ($2.1) daily wage, there is no way an average Nigerian can survive under the excessive fuel and electricity hike, with attendant increases in transportation and other operational costs, which will leave most citizens with nothing for food, medicines, house rents and other basic necessities of life.”

He also argued that the hike in prices would aggravate the scary situation in the last five years, where the country’s citizens were resorting to committing suicide, embarking on slavery missions abroad as well as selling of their children as options.

He added that: “Our party therefore finds it extremely cruel and insensitive for any body, particularly, an official of this failed administration, to attempt to antagonize Nigerians by comparing our nation to other countries where their Presidents are working hard in providing gainful employments, running productive economies and functional infrastructure, and where citizens boast of strong purchasing power.

“PDP therefore rejects the highly irrational argument by the Minister of Information, Mohammed, that fuel price is lower in some West African countries, without presenting the contradictory economic settings in those countries and ours.

“Moreover, given our natural endowment, it is incontrovertible that Nigeria has always had cheaper fuel than her neighbours, It is however disgraceful that this Buhari administration, given its incompetence, extreme cluelessness as well as obnoxious and poverty inducing policies, has reduced Nigeria from the Giant of Africa to a West African ‘struggler’.”

Ologbondiyan further said the party would accept an immediate downward review of the cost of fuel and electricity and nothing else.

He concluded: “President Buhari must know that the duty of every responsible government is to solve problems and not to inflict pain and invent justification for its own failures.

“On this fuel and electricity prices increase, the PDP, once again, charges President Buhari to end the grandstanding of his administration and listen to Nigerians before it is too late.”