Fuel Subsidy will crumble Economy, we need another Model

The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria has promised that the current lingering Fuel Scarcity will soon become a thing of the past.

National Operations Manager of the Association, Mike Osatuyi, disclosed this while reacting to the news about the astronomical increase in Transport fares across the Country, especially on Interstate routes.

Mr Osatuyi said the lingering crisis is a s a result of backlog in supply caused by inability to get supply at the official retail price making it difficult to sell at the official price for Nigerians.

He added that the Association now has an agreement with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Retail Limited on getting supplies at 148 Naira which will make it possible to sell at the official price to Nigerians.

He said the clearing of the backlog of supply will take a bit of time through the agreement that is still to go into operation.

He said the initiative is to be put into operation through the Lagos, Calabar and Port Harcourt axis of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Retail Limited Depots.

On what the association and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation will be doing differently, Mr Osatuyi said the issue was cause by lower supply than what is being supplied.

He added that the issue will start easing off soon and will be much better once Fuel Subsidy is removed from June since it will bring more players and funding into the sector.

For his part, Bala Zaka, an Oil and Gas industry expert, said the whole issue is a case of the nation and people within the sector running out of excuses.

He said the issue with the Oil and Gas Sector is just simply a case of inefficiency and nothin more.

He described the issue within the Sector as placing something on a wrong model adding that building something on a wrong model will fail.

According to him, deregulation will eventually crumble the Nigerian Economy.

He added that Economic reforms model needs to address issues in a sector based on its peculiarities and that the way it is, deregulating the downstream sector of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry will not work.

Going Further, He said Nigeria has an energy crisis that is apparent in just being able to generate 10000MW of Electricity for over 200 Million people and that Oil and Gas is now an Energy source that will create more problems by its deregulation.