The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), has commended President Bola Tinubu for subsidy removal and tasked him on palliatives for Nigerians.
Mr Debo Ahmed, National President of IPMAN, said this while addressing newsmen in Abuja .
Ahmed said that for a long time IPMAN had been very supportive of the removal of fuel subsidy because of its implication on the economy and the market space.
He added that a lot of money that should be channelled to the development of country was used on subsidy.
“I commend the president for removing subsidy on his first day in office. He has tried.
“He did a very good job. Previous government found it difficult to remove subsidy.”
According to Ahmed, not that they do not want to remove it because the political exigency is more than economic exigency to them.
“If you remember, during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s time, they came with appropriate pricing, deregulation.
“They gave it all sort of names but they could not do it; Obasanjo was only increasing the price, you increase the price the thing is still there because we are importing.
“So president Tinubu has done a good job and it is going to help this country a lot,” he said.
Ahmed, however, said that the government needed to put palliatives package together for Nigerians because that was the area it was lacking.
He said putting some palliatives in place that would ameliorate the sufferings of Nigerians and even the marketers would be helpful.
“The government should have started planning about palliatives like provision of buses, salary increase because it is not the government that will increase salaries but the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC).
” All these things should have been done but the government did not do all these things. I am sure that the new government is doing something about palliatives.”
Ahmed said there were other lingering issues that needed to be addressed .
He said that before now, it was only
Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) that was importing while all the marketers depended on NNPCL to get their products.
“When the subsidy removal was announced, we had a lot of tickets that are pending.
” We have up to N5 billion worth of tickets that are pending with NNPCL retail that we have not been able to access.
“Most of these monies were borrowed from the banks and our members are not enthusiastic to go and load because they don’t know what happened to their tickets.
” We are trying to meet with the management of NNPC to discuss these issues amicably,” he said.
According to Ahmed, IPMAN controls 70 per cent of the market and the purpose of establishing IPMAN has been achieved.
He said that with IPMAN units, it would be better for the country because it would be able to import more products and crash the price in the long run for the benefit of Nigerians.
He said that IPMAN could do a lot to bring prices of petroleum product down.
He said that IPMAN was in a position to bring in a lot of products to make sure that the price dropped a little .
” Since the market has been deregulated, a lot of people will bring in products and when the products come, the law of economics that is supply and demand will set it and certainly prices will go down.”
(NAN)