Once again Nigerians are faced with an increase in the price of petrol as the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has raised the new pump price to N998 per litre in Lagos area and N1,030 per litre in Abuja.
NNPC stations displayed the new price in Lagos and Abuja on Wednesday. The new pump price, which is 12.7% or N113 increase from the initial price, has been initiated across all NNPC filling stations in Lagos.
NNPC had on September 3, increased the pump price of petrol from N617 per litre to between N855 and N897, depending on location.
Reacting to the increase the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) said President Bola Tinubu has betrayed the Nigerian people. NLC president Joe Ajaero said in a statement that government and the NNPC are acting in lockstep to impoverish citizens.
“It looks like the only thing this government is known for is increasing the pump price of petrol without commensurate capacity of Nigerians or mitigatory measures,” Ajaero said.
“We challenge the government to go to the drawing board and present us with a blueprint for an inclusive economic growth and national development instead of this spasmodic ad hocism and palliative policy. It needs no stating the fact that the latest wave of increase has grossly altered the calculations of Nigerians once again at a time they were reluctantly coming to terms with their new realities.
It will further deepen poverty as production capacities dip, more jobs lost with multidimensional negative effects.
In light of this, we urge the government to immediately reverse this rate hike as previous increases did not produce any good result. People only got poorer.
“But more fundamentally, the government should be bold enough to tell Nigerians in advance the destination it wants to take the country.”
