President of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas workers (NUPENG), Comrade. Igwe Achese has vowed to resist any attempt to increase the price of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, popularly known as petrol.
Speaking on a live television programme monitored in Abuja, the NUPENG president argued that the billions of naira owed oil marketers by the Federal Government should not be the basis for increasing petrol price.
Some oil marketers had said that they were not importing petrol due to the fact that its current pump price was not sustainable, as the landing cost of PMS had risen to over N135 per litre.
The marketers also stated that the Federal Government owed them billions of naira and that if the money was paid, many dealers would delve into the business of PMS importation as against the current situation where only the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation imports more than 90 per cent of the product.
Achese said, “That debt shouldn’t be the basis for talking about increasing the prices of petroleum products. If marketers are owed by the government, I believe they have a right to demand the debt and the government also has a responsibility to pay these marketers.
“But my basic concern here is that must we continue to talk about increasing the price of fuel? The economic situation is biting in the sense that things are hard; economically we cannot move forward and yet somebody wants to wake up one morning and say the only option they want to apply is to talk about increasing fuel price, because you are being owed or because you want to make profits.”