Monday, November 11, 2024 -Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA has made an allegation against President Bola Tinubu and Dangote Refinery.
According to the group, the incessant hikes in the pump price of fuel
was simply President Bola Tinubu’s selfish agenda to empower his cronies.
“The truth and nothing but the truth is that
the policy of incessantly hiking the pump price of fuel and petroleum products
were never meant to benefit the commoners of Nigeria,” a statement signed
by Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA ‘s national coordinator, said.
“The primary goal is to financially reward friends of those
holding sway in the current administration, their cronies or business
affiliates.
“The hikes in the costs of fuel have only brought instability in the
prices of essential food items and the inability of millions of absolutely poor
households in Nigeria to buy their essential food items, has resulted in
malnutrition of hundreds of thousands of children, mass hunger, increasing
number of out-of-school children, and starvation and untimely deaths.
“Whereas most poor Nigerians perish in unmitigated poverty and
unpredictable high costs of living, only very few people running businesses in
the oil and gas sector are making a kill by way of profits as data and
statistics made available at the weekend have shown this irrefutable fact.”The
rights association appealed to oil and gas companies to roll out corporate
social responsibility initiatives to economically empower millions of
increasingly impoverished Nigerians.
The group said that failure to do this, the business climate of Nigeria
will become perilous and dangerous because “if
the poor can’t sleep because they are hungry, the rich can’t sleep inevitably
because the poor, angry people are awake”.
HURIWA further endorsed the claim by the Nigerian labour Congress, NLC,
that marketers, including Dangote Refinery, have colluded to inflate the costs
of fuel. It called on Nigerians to increase public pressure on the National
Assembly to investigate the allegation of collusion and inflating of cost of
fuel.
DAILY POST reports that the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, had at the
weekend accused Dangote Group and oil marketers of ganging up to rip Nigerians
off in the pricing of PMS.
NLC disclosed this in a communiqué on Sunday after its National
Executive Council meeting held on Friday.
The union called on the Nigerian government to immediately activate the
Port Harcourt Refinery and other government-owned refineries.
HURIWA which cited publicly available data, stated that as a consequence
of the incessant increase in price of fuel and other products, a total of six
oil and gas companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) generated
N2.97 trillion revenue in nine months of 2024.
This represents an increase of 115 per cent increase from N1.39 trillion
generated in corresponding period of 2023.
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