By Simon Ateba/Lagos

 

Nigeria’s anti-corruption organisation, the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, CACOL, on Monday blasted embattled President, Goodluck Jonathan, and described the sudden reduction of fuel price less than a month to a tough presidential election as a meaningless political gimmick.

Jonathan on Sunday approved the reduction of the price of the Premium Motor Spirit otherwise known as Petrol from N97 per litre to N87 per litre.

The Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, who announced the reduction at a press conference in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, said the new price regime would take effect immediately.

But the Executive Chairman of the Coalition and a fearless Nigerian activist, Comrade Debo Adeniran, said the Jonathan administration is hypocritical.

The reduction twenty-six days to a presidential election, “is coming far behind the time we expected and it makes the whole thing look like a political gimmick, a kind of action engineered by political expediency”, Adeniran said.

He said Nigerians should not be taken for a ride “because the amount of difference between the time they ought to have reduced the prices of petroleum products and now is so enormous.”

Adeniran added: “They only told us they reduced the price of PMS, what of Kerosine and diesel which are consumed, if not more or in larger quantity than the petrol. What has been done so far is haphazard. The reduction is not proportional to the reduction in the prices of crude in the international market”

He said when the price of petroleum products was hiked, the Federal Government said it was because the price of crude had gone up in the international market and they had to subsidise.

“But now the price has gone down more than 70 per cent, we expect the N97 petrol price and the prices of other petroleum product should have gone down about 70 per cent too,” he said.

Adeniran ended his statement with a warning: “Hence, the government should be ready to account for what happens to the difference that accrued between the time of the global fall and the time they’re doing the reduction.”