Adamu Salihu, a Kano resident who said he and his family members voted for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the last Presidential election, has lamented the hike in the pump price of fuel.
The price of fuel moved from N195 per litre to N530 after Tinubu removed subsidy during his inaugural address and climbed to N617 in Abuja and N620 in Kano in the early hours of Tuesday.
Reacting, Salihu, who said he hails from Bichi LGA in the State, said he might be forced to take to crime.
According to him: “Honestly this new price has hit us very hard. This is not what we voted for. My children and I voted the current government in power. What we are being served is contrary to what we asked for.
“I am a Nigerian, I deserve to be treated right. I am no longer a youth, I have children and they also go out and vote. Very soon if there is no change, I will ask them to stop voting because they are no longer going to school and have started hawking ‘Awara’.
“I dropped them out of school and they are now selling ‘Awara’. How can they be denied education and start hawking? I have been in politics since the time of NRC and SDP. If things continue to go like this, we can retaliate. if our lawmakers and representatives will not do anything about it. We can take the law into our hands despite being law abiding citizens.
“All these hardship we are facing is as a result of hike in fuel price, if not, we won’t be suffering like this. We don’t have good representation.”
Meanwhile, the Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, has attributed the increase in petrol pump price from N540 to N617 per litre to market forces.
Kyari, who spoke with State House reporters on Tuesday after a meeting with Vice President Kashim Shettima at the Presidential Villa Abuja, said the increase was not based on a short supply of petrol.
“They are just prices depending on the market realities. This is the meaning of making sure that the market regulates itself. Prices will go up and sometimes they will come down also. There is no supply issue. It is not a supply issue.”
“When you go to the market, you buy the product, you come to the market and sell it at its prevailing market price. It has nothing to do with supply. We don’t have supply issues. We have a robust supply. We’ve had over 32 days of supply in the country. That’s not a problem,” the NNPCL GCEO explained.
Kyari added that it was in the interest of the country for marketers to fix the prices.
I’m also assuring Nigerians that this is the best way to go forward so that we can adjust prices when market forces come to play. I don’t have the details this moment, but I know that our marketing wing acts just like every other company in this business. I know that a number of companies have imported petroleum products today. So, many of them are on line. I’m sure my colleague would confirm this. Market forces have started to play; people have started having confidence in the market. Private sector people are importing products, but there is no way they can recover their cost if they cannot take market reflective cost.”