The Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari, said he shared the view that the common man would be at the receiving end of the oil subsidy removal.
Kyari, however, said the action is a necessary evil.
“There is this common argument that the masses will suffer. I agree that once you increase prices of this proportion, as it has happened, it will have an impact on inflation. There is no doubt about it. The market determines what happens next. Even inflation in very many countries goes up when you have the economic indices become difficult,” the NNPC boss stated this during his visit to the secretariat of the All Progressives Congress for a meeting with the party National Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu.
He also remarked that the oil subsidy regime was a dissipation of the country’s wealth serving the interest of handful of Nigerian elite and some inhabitants of Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt, saying, “Very many of us here have at least two cars in our houses including myself. When you buy fuel of 100 litres in an SUV, you are literally subsidising three litres with 100 naira for all of us.
“Even the consumption itself is clearly skewed in locations and states where the level of economic activities are higher than the others. It is very understandable and that is why people can afford it in Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Kano. So over 38 per cent of the total fuel distributed in this country ends up in these places. All the other parts of the country suffer for it and you can see the relativity. Imagine the per capital basis?”
