The National Working Committee (NWC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Thursday, May 19, met with the party’s state executives and a high level federal government delegation on the new petroleum products supply and pricing framework introduced by the federal government.
Nigeria’s minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed. Photo: Michael Obasa
The NWC of the APC was led by Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, the party’s national chairman, while Babachir David Lawal, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) led the federal government delegation.
Some dignitaries that attended the meeting include Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, Adamu Adamu, minister of education, Chris Nwabueze Ngige, minister of labour and employment, Segun Oni, the APC deputy national chairman (south) among others.
NAIJ.com has compiled ten important things Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture said at the meeting.
1. It’s important that we get the concept of liberalization very well because this is not about subsidy removal. In the 2016 budget we made no provision for subsidy and you cannot remove what was not there.
2. In 2015 alone, we paid over one trillion naira in subsidy and one trillion naira in subsidy is 1/6 of the entire national budget so we agreed that we are not going to put subsidy. So what we did was not removing subsidy but actually liberalization but we had to do it because if the country is to survive we do not have an option.
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3. We do not have an option because the regime before now talking about the fuel regime, was based on a process where some licensed oil marketers would go to the central bank and open a letter of credit. When a letter of credit is opened they bring in the fuel but unfortunately the price of crude which accounted for over 70 per cent of our fuel exchange crashed from an all-high level of 100 dollars to under 30 dollars, As a matter of fact for some parts of this year we sold crude for 28 dollars.
4. Since October last year, 90 per cent of the petrol that has been brought in till date was brought in by the NNPC because all the major independent marketers have refused to bring in petrol because they said they had no access to foreign exchange and we can’t expect them to buy foreign exchange on the open market and sell N86.50.So NNPC had to step in not because NNPC also had foreign exchange.
5. The NNPC had been exchanging the 445,000 barrel of crude allocated daily for local refining and it has engaged in a transparent process called Direct Sale Direct Purchase (DSDP).
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6. It now gives this 445,000 of crude a day and changes it for petrol to come to Nigeria but even that has its own disadvantages.
7. The 445,000 barrels of crude oil even if we get all of it to change for petrol, accounts for only 48 per cent total daily consumption for the country.
8. Last month in the history of this country, the least amount distributed was N299 billion between the three tiers of government. So this new price regime is not about an option. It is not as if this is option A,B or C it is about saying look we must face reality. We must be courageous enough to take decisions that in the long term will benefit Nigerians.
9. From 2.2 million barrels of crude which we budgeted for, today because of vandalism we can only produce 1.4 million barrels which means we are losing 800,000 barrels every day due to vandalism. What this translates to is that there is less money for the federation account, less foreign exchange and that is why we had to take this decision.
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10. In 2015 alone, over 1 trillion naira was paid for subsidy. Even our own administration had to go to the National Assembly for a supplementary budget, a subsidy component of N522 billion. When this system becomes operational we are not going to pay anybody subsidy which means we can use that money for growth, education, health.
The post Read 10 important things this minister said at the APC meeting yesterday appeared first on Nigeria News today & Breaking news | Read on NAIJ.COM (Nigerian newspapers).
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