A foremost Non-Governmental organization, and a civil rights group – HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has accused President Muhammadu Buhari, the defacto petroleum minister of insincerity and insensitivity towards the sufferings that his administration imposed on Nigerians through artificial boarding of petroleum products in order to smuggle through the back door a new all time high petrol price of N175 as recently announced by the junior minister of petroleum, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu.
The group in a statement by its President, Emmanual Onwubiko said ”The emerging narratives from the investigative sittings of the senate on the 2017 Christmas season’s deliberate hoarding of fuel products by marketers, shows that the hardships faced by millions of Nigerians last December was a deliberate ploy and indeed a well choreographed gambit by the Federal Government headed by President Buhari and executed by the shylock fuel dealers just to blackmail the populace to accept the planned hike in the pump prices of petrol to a prohibitive figure of N175 per liter”.
HURIWA also wants the Nigerian government to combat the deep seated extreme corruption within the NNPC including the numerous cases of breaches of procurement law in the awards of contracts to ghost companies amounting to well over $25 billion USD which was even revealed by an insider in the person of the minister of state for Petroleum, Mr Ibe Kachikwu. It said ”Ending the VICIOUS CIRCLE OF CORRUPTION IN NNPC is much more urgent than the ongoing devilish manipulations by government to arbitrarily hike the pump prices of petroleum products in a nation whereby ballooning poverty has kept over 100 million as being absolutely impoverished and unable to find standard three square meals per day.”
“We have always suspected that this government was economical with the truth when all the key officials feigned ignorance of the circumstances that instigated the widespread scarcity of petroleum products during the festive season. The confirmation of our fears by way of disclosure of a plot to hike the petrol price to N175 which emanated from the mouth of Ibe Kachikwu shows that President Buhari took Nigerians for fools when he made a threat in his January 1st 2018 national broadcast to deal with fuel marketers who hoarded the petroleum products towards last Christmas leading to excruciating pains and hardships across the land”.
“We find it ridiculous that barely 48 hours after President Buhari pretentiously apologised to Nigerians for the unprecedented and horrendous existential pains caused by the December 2017 artificial fuel scarcity nation-wide and also accused marketers of hoarding fuel and threatened fire and brimstone, this same government was hand-in-gloves with these so-called shylock fuel marketers in telling Nigerians that fuel can no longer sell at N145 but now at the most satanic hiked price of N175. This is the height of dishonesty, callous insensitive and malicious falsehood”.
“Nigerians should by now be reasonably conscientized following the collective punishment inflicted on all of us by both the Buhari’s government and the fuel marketers throughout the festive period of the last Year to massively reject the blackmail by this government and to outrightly reject any plot to increase the costs of fuel. How come that it is now that Nigeria makes more money from the exports of our abundant crude oil resources following a tremendous rise in the international asking price per barrel of crude oil that the long suffering masses are being taxed in the most suffocating fashion the highest pump prices of petroleum products? What is the offence of the Masses for voting this government in 2015 that the President has continued to unleash a regime of punitive economic policies that have deprived Millions of Nigerians of their livelihoods and now this same government seeks to impose the most extreme buying price of premium motor spirit which will inevitably have ripple effects on the general costs of living for millions of Nigerians?”
The Rights group also called on Nigerians of all walks of life to publicly protest this sinister plot by President Buhari’s regime to impose further punitive oppressive economic policy which the planned hike in pump price of fuel represents.
The group carpeted the federal government for deliberately lying that it was not paying subsidy like the previous government but was the same government through the NNPC’s allegedly corrupt hierarchy and the Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbanjo confirmed that it was lying all these while over the issue of payment of subsidy to fuel marketers.
“This government has for three years failed to stop the importation of petrol by also refusing to fix the existing refineries in Nigeria but has continued to bring in substantially poisonous fuel products that pollute the environment, endanger the health of citizens and threatens the roadworthiness of the cars plying our roads. Most Nigerians are now facing health challenges of respiratory diseases being spread by the massive amounts of toxic petrol being imported by the NNPC and sold at cut throats’ price to unfortunate Nigerians”.
“Nigerians must in their millions protest this evil policy of government to impose the harshest fuel price in the history of Nigeria. The citizens must exercise their constitutionally guaranteed rights to civil protest by making their voices to be heard loud and clear and to stop the current government from proceeding with this demonic review of petrol price. Chapter four of the Nigerian Constitution guarantees to Nigerians to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly/Protests”.
HURIWA recalled that the Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, said that the perennial petrol scarcity and price instability would only stop when the Federal Government removes the disparity between pump price and landing cost of the product.
HURIWA further quoted the minister as saying during a presentation at a public hearing on the fuel crisis jointly organized by the Senate and House of Representatives that it is shameful that government has failed to get the oil sector business right just as he noted that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) became the sole importer of petrol because of difficulties faced by oil marketing companies, a situation that greatly affected product supply.
HURIWA, however, believes that the Federal government of Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari has told consistent lies to Nigerians to try to confuse the gullible citizens that certain marketers were hoarding the fuel just as the Rights group said the recent presentation on possible hike of petrol price has exposed the government as being the official agents that ordered the systematic hoarding of fuel so as to create a general atmosphere of scarcity that could compel gullible Nigerians to accept just any hike.
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