Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, Atiku Abubakar, has said the call by the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, IPMAN, for Federal Government intervention to curtail fuel price hikes has put the President Bola Tinubu administration’s argument over petrol subsidy removal to shame.
Atiku spoke in a statement by his media team on Thursday.
DAILY POST exclusively reported that IPMAN President, Abubakar Maigandi, had appealed to Tinubu to broker a deal with Dangote Refinery to cut fuel prices.
IPMAN’s comments came amid the latest fuel pump price hike to between N1,310 and N1,350 per litre.
Reacting, Atiku backed IPMAN’s call for government intervention with domestic refiners to reduce petrol prices.
According to Atiku, IPMAN’s call for intervention is fundamentally significant because it came from people who buy, distribute and sell petroleum products every day and therefore understand, beyond government propaganda, what expensive petrol is doing to businesses and Nigerian families.
“IPMAN has come late to this conversation, but it has come to the right conclusion. The association is now saying that government cannot simply stand aside while petrol prices punish Nigerians and that deliberate subsidy around domestic refining can help bring prices down. That is precisely the policy principle President Tinubu and his gang of jesters have spent weeks trying to ridicule.
“Tinubu’s argument has always depended on deliberately confusing the import-subsidy bazaar and a transparent, production-linked intervention that strengthens Nigerian refining and delivers measurable relief to Nigerian consumers,” he stated.
DAILY POST reports that Atiku Abubakar had proposed the return of fuel subsidies if elected.
However, Tinubu’s government has insisted that the removal of fuel subsidies was necessary to stabilise Nigeria’s economy.
Fuel price: Petrol marketers have put Tinubu’s subsidy argument to shame — Atiku