The Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to relinquish his position as
minister of petroleum if he cannot rise up to the responsibilities of the
office.
The party said this in reaction
to the fuel scarcity across the nation.
In a statement by Kola
Ologbondiyan, the opposition party asked the president to stop sitting in “his
comfort zone” while blaming oil marketers.
It described as unacceptable, the
hardship Nigerians have been experiencing over for the scarcity of petroleum
products.
“The unbearable fuel situation in
the country is completely unacceptable. Mr President must be up and doing,” the
statement read.
“He should not allow anybody to
push him to claim that the issue of fuel scarcity is not under the purview of
the minister of petroleum resources. When he took office as president of
Nigeria and also as the minister of petroleum resources, he was aware that the
buck stops at his table.
“Nigerians must not be made to
suffer, especially at this time of the year, when we have the Yuletide and New
Year festivities, which come with a lot of activities.
“This is the same APC government
that promised that it will make fuel available and affordable. Today, under
their deceitful and corrupt watch, fuel has not only become extremely scarce,
the price has also risen from where the PDP left it at N86.50K per liter to as
high as N300 per liter and above.
“The effect is that transport
fares, running costs, prices of food, medicines and other basic needs have
soared beyond the reach of Nigerians, who are now groaning heavily under the
hardship of APC misrule.
“But should Nigerians be
subjected to this type of anguish and pain after supporting APC to win election
in 2015? Does APC indeed deserve another support in 2019? Whereas we know that
the time is already up for the APC, we nevertheless urge Mr President to,
within the remaining short time, rise up to his responsibilities as the
minister of petroleum resources or immediately relinquish that position and
allow a competent person to run the ministry.”
I gathered that many independent petroleum marketers have stopped importing due to negative disparities in cost to profits margins. This means that the fuel scarcity will bite harder and this is going to be another yuletide period to be spent by many Nigerians at different filling stations. Is the government going to subsidise or pump price will be increased? Nigerians await how the APC government under Buhari will handle this unfortunate development.
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