FORMER president of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and now a member of the House of Representatives, Peter Akpattasson, at the weekend in Benin City expressed his opposition to the planed removal of fuel subsidy by the Federal Government.He said if implemented, the removal of fuel subsidy would lead to 'inflation, penury, poverty, crisis and violence.'Instead, Akpattasson said the Federal Government should embark on a phased removal of fuel subsidy and then liberalisation of the sector and full commercialisation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). He spoke to journalists at the Benin Airport over the weekend.'Liberalisation is good, what is important is to make sure that NNPC as a government representative in the industry should be fully commercialised and should operate as a commercial business entity fully funded for a take off so that it can operate as a separate entity that does not have to wait for politicians before business decisions are taken. In such a way, it will now be in a position to compete with other private investors in the industry and then at that point, refineries will spring up, our local refining capacity will increase because NNPC will not be their regulator, will not be their monitor but a competitor, a more efficient organisation and that is provided for in the Petroleum Industry Bill. If only they can wait for expediting the passage of the bill to create the enabling environment for competition, for commercialisation for effective take-off of whatever policy they then propose.'The lawmaker representing Akoko-Edo Federal Constituency under the platform of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), also insisted that organised labour has not sold out on their stance in the proposal of government. 'I have been in this struggle for a long time and our position has not changed, if it has changed, I will find out. The position has always been that there are conditions before deregulation and those conditions have to be achieved before you deregulate. I will personally subscribe to a phased removal after attaining some level of competition.'He said the timing for the planned removal of the subsidy was wrong because the right investment climate in the sector that would help regulate pricing has not been created.'What is important at this point in time is to start working towards achieving such economic environment where the level of manipulation will be curtailed, where investors will be encouraged to come in and set up refineries and it is important that why doing this, plans should be on to investigate those short-comings that have been identified in the present regime of subsidy. As they are complaining now that this money is not getting to the right people, why is it not getting there' Deal with those who are manipulating the process and until that is done; it is totally uncalled for, for anybody to insist on removing fuel subsidy. Secondly, the argument that the money will be used for development is not tenable because over the years, they've been telling us this same story all the way from the time of Abacha that if they increase prices, the revenue generated will be used to build schools, roads all the rest of them, the whole thing has turned like the magic year 2000 where we expected that we will become adequate in health, in education and everything but look at where we are. The same thing will happen when they remove subsidy and there will be high inflation, which will make life unbearable for Nigerians, which will reduce the already abysmally low purchasing power of the ordinary Nigerian.
Click here to read full news..
