Nigerian’s will be buying petrol for as much as N212 in March, according to the new petrol guiding price template for March 2021, released by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) on Thursday night.
In the template, the pricing agency stipulated that the price of petrol (PMS – Premium Motor Spirit) is expected to sell between N209.61 and N212.61. In its February guiding price template, the expected retail price of petrol was between N183.74 and N186.74.
The PPPRA has been setting guidelines for petrol sales since the President Buhari’s administration announce a partial deregulation of the oil sector, but the government maintains control of policies that determine ultimate retail costs.
The agency and this government may argue that the increment is in line with its petrol pricing liberalization; with no subsidy, petrol price will increase as crude oil prices increases, and will reduce as crude oil prices decreases.
The new increase flies in the face of pronouncements made by this same government earlier in the month. We have ruled out any increment in the ex-depot price of Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) in March, said the NNPC in a press release on 28th February, 2021.
Do not engage in panic buying and hoarding, it cautioned the public. Just as most things that this government say, it was all lies. By the 28th of February, the NNPC must have known that the price increase was coming and yet they blatantly lied to the Nigerian People.
Ultimately, the ex-depot price for March has been set at N206.42, a whole N26.00 upwards review from the N180.55 it stood at in February.
“We will no longer be releasing guiding price bands for the sale of petrol at filing stations across the nations,” this Government said in September 2020 through the PPPRA. The oil marketers are now free to fix prices.
“The PPPRA remains a regulator in the downstream sector of the oil industry, but the difference now is that we do not indicate that this is the price that you must sell because if you do that, it is price-fixing,” Abdulkadir Saidu, the Executive Secretary of PPPRA said.
The “price fixers” have now fixed the prices once again for all Nigerians, putting another layer of difficult in a country where everything is already difficult.
Inflation is rising, wages have stagnated, Naira is weakening, unemployment is increasing, government debt is rising, insecurity is rising, and ultimately, the standard of living is going down, with Nigeria becoming home to poorer and poorer people.
The tamed Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and other stakeholders will likely protest over this increment, but will that make any difference? The answer to that question leans more to the NO side than the YES.
Nnamdi Maduakor is a Writer, Investor and Entrepreneur
