Press Statement
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) cautions that the Buhari Presidency
is pushing Nigerians to the wall with its arrogant display of
insensitivity and total disregard to the demands by the citizens to
effect an immediate downward review in the pump price of fuel.
The party described the attempt by the Buhari Presidency to justify the
wicked increase in the pump price of fuel from N87 per liter under the
PDP to N160 as provocative, confrontational and totally unacceptable to
Nigerians.
Our party holds that the defence of such a humongous hike, which has
worsened the hardship being suffered by Nigerians under the Buhari
administration, is in bad taste and should be rescinded immediately.
It is indeed an unpardonable slap on the sensibilities of Nigerians that
after running a heavily corrupt oil trade and subsidy regime, through
which over N14 trillion naira had been allegedly frittered by its
officials, the Buhari administration seeks to put the burden of high
costs on innocent and already impoverished citizens.
The PDP totally rejects this attempt to hinge the increase in fuel price
on presumed removal of oil subsidy when it has failed to account for the
proceeds of oil sales in the last five years, even in the face of
confession by the Managing Director of the NNPC, Mele Kyari, in April
this year, that the APC administration had been running an over-bloated
and sleazy oil subsidy regime.
Also the Buhari administration had failed to account for the confession
by the NNPC that it was engaged in secret siphoning of oil money through
a clamed subsidizing of fuel for certain West Africa countries.
The PDP recalls that prior to his emergence as the President, General
Muhammadu Buhari (as he was then known) had declared fuel subsidy a
fraud. Five years after, the government, which he heads, is watching
over a subsidy regime that is brimming with corruption.
Our party insists that Nigerians should not be made to bear the brunt of
the huge corruption in the Buhari administration which has wrecked every
aspect of our national economy.
It is incredulous and shameful for this administration to predicate the
reckless increase in the cost of fuel on a faulty comparison with costs
in other countries of the world, whereas the daily standard of living,
the purchasing power and living wage of the average Nigerian in the last
five years cannot be compared with what obtains in those countries.
Such comparison is therefore not only absurd but also completely
illogical.
Our party had at the wake of this increase cautioned the Buhari
Presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) not to misinterpret
the patience and law-abiding nature of Nigerians as a sign of weakness
on this issue.
It is clear that the APC administration is completely anti-people as
displayed in its refusal to heed to the cries of suffering Nigerians,
who have rejected the fuel price increase, and there is no way history
can be kind to any President who subjected Nigerians to the economic
anguish and pains they have been suffering in the last five years.
Again, we caution the Buhari Presidency and the APC not to continue to
test the elasticity of the will of the people.
Signed:
Kola Ologbondiyan
National Publicity Secretary
