The National Economic Council (NEC) may have dropped the recommendations of its ad-hoc committee which pegged the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) otherwise called petrol at N302 per litre.
BusinessDay gathered that although the committee established last year by the NEC and headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to look into the dwindling revenues of states, had recommended N302 per litre of petrol, the NEC at its first meeting of the year on Thursday, couldn’t present the recommendations for consideration
Members of the ad-hoc committee include Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State, Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, and David Umahi, of Ebonyi State. Others are the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele; Mele Kyari, group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), and Zainab Ahmed, the minister of finance, budget, and national planning.
Edo State governor, Godwin Obaseki while fielding questions from State House journalists yesterday, after the first meeting of the NEC presided over by Vice President Osinbajo, said the “issue was not brought up for discussions at the meeting”
There had been reports that the NEC ad-hoc committee recommended N302 per litre of petrol, to take effect from February, this year.
The meeting, however, ended without the NEC taking a decision on the issue.
But Obaseki, who made a comparison between the price of petrol in Nigeria and its immediate neighbours, stated that while petrol is sold at N165/litre in Nigeria, the same product goes for about 100 percent higher in neighbouring countries.
“Last year, we discovered that while the NNPC was expected to add N200 billion monthly to the Federation Account for sharing, it couldn’t because the money was spent on subsidy”
He disclosed that the Federal Government spent about N2 trillion in 2021, under the subsidy regime, funding the luxury of a few Nigerians to the detriment of the larger majority of the people in the rural areas.
BusinessDay, however, gathered from a reliable presidency source that the Federal Government is not comfortable removing the petrol subsidy at this time.
The source who pleaded anonymity described the subsidy issue as “very delicate” adding that “the government is not willing to remove subsidy for now”
Governor Abdullahi Sule, of Nassarawa State, while also contributing, said: “It is not the entire governors that are making recommendations for fuel subsidy removal, it is an ad-hoc committee set up by the NEC”
At Wednesday’s meeting of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), the governors refused to make a categorical statement on petrol subsidy as well as appropriate pricing for the product, perhaps in an attempt to avoid facing similar rejection, it suffered in May 2021, when it recommended N385/ litre.
In a resolution signed by the chairman of the Governors’ Forum, Kayode Fayemi, the forum said it discussed “the issue around petroleum subsidy and concluded to engage the leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) on how best to address this issue without causing any disaffection or with the view to salvaging the economy for the Nigerian people at the end of the day”
Read also: Fuel subsidy removal: Governors to engage organised labour
“So, we shall be engaging the Nigerian Labour Congress as sub-national leaders with the view to ensuring that the outcome of our engagement will also be fed into the national discourse.”
Fayemi said the NGF commended the Senate for accelerating the removal of the contentious clauses in the draft electoral bill and hope that the second chamber, the House of Representatives would also follow suit so that the revised electoral bill can return to Mr. President for assent so that this can then enable the various institutions, particularly INEC to proceed with its responsibilities towards the various elections in 2022 and 2023.
“We also discussed the health update particularly in relation to COVID-19 infections and expressed happiness that the omicron variant has been declining progressively. However, we also noted that there is the need for states led by us to ramp up the COVID-19 vaccination exercise”
“On nutrition which remains a priority of the government, governors concluded that there is need to increase our support in terms of budgetary provisions for nutrition”
The governors received a presentation from the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, (PABEC), on the ease of doing business and discussed the next phase of doing business survey presented by the special adviser to the president on ease of doing business, Jumoke Oduwole, and the country director of the World Bank, Shubham Chaudhuri.
The presentation elaborated on the need to step up the reforms towards improving the investment and business climate at the sub-national level.
The governors said they reviewed the recently launched national development plan 2021-2025 with the view to ensuring that the national development plan is aligned to individual state development plans that have been produced or in the process of being produced to ensure synergy between the development efforts by the federal as well as state governments
BusinessDay gathered that although the NEC, which is made up of the 36 state governors, does not have the powers to enforce the new price, the recommendations could shape the Federal Government’s final decision on the issues.
