The presidency has told Nigerians not to be deceived by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s stance over the new petrol price. Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, made the comment via a social media post on Tuesday night, September 8.
The PDP, Nigeria’s biggest opposition party has been very vocal about the increase in the pump price of fuel by the Buhari-led administration.
“Our party stands with Nigerians in insisting that there is no way our compatriots can survive an N162 per litre fuel price and an N66 per kw/h of electricity in a country which, in the last five years, ranked as the poverty capital of the world,” the PDP said in a statement earlier in the day. With a frightening 23 per cent unemployment rate; where over 90 million citizens live in abject poverty, many Nigerians are currently living on less than N500 a day according to globally-recognized statistics.
The ruling party was reacting to the PDP’s statement where the opposition party criticised the Buhari administration for increasing the petrol price per litre and the electricity tariff in the country. The APC said successive PDP governments had foisted on the country a corruption-tainted fuel subsidy regime, which is now affecting the present government.
“We call on the PDP to surprise itself and indeed Nigerians by cajoling its cronies who ran the subsidy rackets — many of them in hiding abroad — to return our stolen commonwealth in their possession,” Yekini Nabena, APC acting spokesman said in a statement. On his part, the minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, at a press briefing in Abuja on Monday, September 7 said the angry reactions that have greeted the latest prices of petrol are “unnecessary and totally mischievous.” “The government can no longer afford fuel subsidy, as revenues and foreign exchange earnings have fallen by almost 60%, due to the downturn in the fortunes of the oil sector. Yet, the government has had to sustain expenditures, especially on salaries and capital projects,” Alhaji Mohammed informed journalists at the briefing.
