The administration has announced that President Bola Tinubu will not intervene in the dispute between Dangote Petroleum Refinery and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited over the price of premium motor spirit (PMS), better known as petrol.
Speaking with State House media on Wednesday, Bayo Onanuga, the president’s special assistant on information and strategy, stated that the downstream petroleum sector has been deregulated.
Following a lengthy period of price discussions, the NNPC began lifting fuel at the Dangote refinery on September 15.
On the same day, NNPC announced that it purchased fuel from Dangote refinery for N898 per litre.
The Dangote refinery, on the other hand, dismissed the claim as “both misleading and mischievous”.
The next day, NNPC said that petrol would be sold at N950.22 per litre across all of its retail locations in Lagos, but people in northern Nigeria would pay extra for the product, with those in Borno set to pay the highest PMS pump price of N1,019.22.
According to Onanuga, the new petroleum policy allows oil marketers to import petrol and sell it at a reasonable price.
He said:
“The PMS regime has been deregulated. Dangote is a private company. NNPC should not forget that it is a public limited liability company.”
“Whatever controversy both of them are having is their problem. They are operating in terms of the Petroleum Industry Act.
“NNPC is on its own, even though it’s owned by the federal government, the state government and local councils and everything, but it’s operating as a limited liability company.
“You can see what the private market has said that I think they find the NNPC or Dangote price too much for them. They will resolve to import fuel.
“It is the consumers who benefit if a price war starts. If NNPC fuel is too much, the public market can go to the market and bring in their fuel and sell at the price that they think is very reasonable and profitable for them.”
Onanuga stated that NNPC has the authority to set petrol prices.
The presidential spokeswoman stated that the federal government is pushing alternative energy options by subsidising conversion costs for people who want to switch to compressed natural gas (CNG) engines.
“Some of the transporters are already converting their vehicles to CNG, and the government has a plan to make sure that about a million of those vehicles run on CNG. The whole idea is that if they run on CNG, the cost of transportation will go down.”
He said the government also has a plan to make sure that private car owners can convert to CNG at a reduced cost.
“For transporters, is almost free for them, but for private vehicle owners, the government has a plan to subsidize, I mean, the cost of converting the vehicle from petrol to CNG.”
Onanuga also stated that the administration encourages states to construct urban transportation systems to lower overall transportation expenditures.