Atiku will reduce fuel price, says PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party has said its presidential candidate has worked out a pricing template that will immediately crash the pump price of fuel in the country.

The party said the President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress administration had failed to do the needful in the last three years.

This was contained in a statement signed by the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, in Abuja, on Thursday.

The PDP said it was against the alleged increase of the official prices of diesel and kerosene, stating that such would bring more economic pressure on the already impoverished nation, as most businesses and homes across the country heavily depended on the products for sustenance.

Ologbondiyan revealed that the PDP had been in high level talks with top international players in the oil and gas industry, adding that the party’s engagements “have shown that the appropriate pump price of fuel in the Nigerian market, under the current subsidy regimes of the Buhari Presidency, should be within the borders of N87 to N90 per litre as against the N145 currently being charged.”

He said with the current price template of crude oil in the international market, the Buhari administration “has no justification to keep the pump price of fuel at N145 per litre and watch Nigerians groan under the weight of high prices, while a cabal at the presidency loots the funds meant to subsidiSe the product.”

He added, “For every N145 paid for a litre of fuel, the Presidency cabal diverts a hidden N58 which Nigerians have continued to pay since the fuel price was increased from N87 to presumably subsidised cost of N145.

Attempts to get a reaction from the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, were unsuccessful. Calls to his mobile phone indicated that he was unavailable.

However, a chieftain of the party, Alhaji Abdullahi Jalo, said the PDP should stop playing with the intelligence of Nigerians.

He said, “The PDP is desperate to return to power but Nigerians are wiser and cannot be deceived by the promises of a party that failed them. Is it a party that failed to make our refineries work that we will believe? The subsidy scandal is still there. Nigerians know President Muhammadu Buhari is sincere in his approach to solving our problems, they will vote him again in 2019.”