Stakeholders insist on fuel subsidy removal
Ghana urges Nigeria to follow own example Stakeholders in the country’s downstream sector have insisted that due to the fall in crude oil prices which has resulted in decline
in revenue generation, the Federal
Government has to remove subsidy on petroleum products. The stakeholders gave the advice in Lagos yesterday at the Oil Trading Logistics Africa conference where they gathered to deliberate on“ Fuelling Economic Growth through Petroleum Policy and Infrastructure: The Downstream Agenda”. The Chief Executive of Ghana Petroleum
Authority, Moses Asaga, advised Nigeria to follow the Ghana example of deregulation of the downstream sector. Other stakeholders, including Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC), Dr. Ibe Kachikwu; former Minister of State for Petroleum, Odein
Ajumogobia; and former Executive
Secretary of Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency, Reginald Stanley, expressed belief that the privatisation of the country’s downstream sector is the only way
out of its current challenges. According to Asaga, Nigeria has a lot to learn from Ghana about the management of the petroleum downstream sector. He noted that
deregulation policy will take away the sole right of the national petroleum company to determine the prices of
fuel products in the country. Asaga said deregulation also allows the various bulk oil distribution companies to determine how much
they would want to charge for fuel to their customers. He said Ghana had always seen Nigeria as a big
brother and had learnt a lot from Nigeria in respect to management
of the petroleum industry. “But this time around, I think Nigeria needs to learn about managing the downstream sector from Ghana. We have been able to deregulate
our downstream sector of the petroleumindustry”.
