Governors meet Thursday over fuel price
The 36 states governors will be meeting on Thursday, February 25, to deliberate on the issue of fuel price hike. Chris Ngige, minister of Labour and Employment, made this known after a bipartite meeting of the Federal Government and the organised labour which held at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa Abuja on Sunday night. The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) represented the organised labour at the meeting.
Ngige, who briefed journalists on their resolutions, said the labour unions have examined the report of the Technical Committee on Premium Motor Spirit ( PMS) Pricing Framework as agreed at the last meeting and made their submissions, and that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) also presented its own report.
“The labour side saw that they (NNPC) were making some points and like I said, it is work in progress. Governors are going to discuss this on Thursday. They have discussed this at the National Economic Council ( NEC) and so, everybody is involved because we find ourselves in dire straits. There is no money for subsidy.
“The NNPC has explained. What they are doing is import dependent. Deregulation is import dependent but they are doing bulk purchasing. So, they can get discounts. They are also using foreign exchange that is discounted for them. They are not buying from the parallel market. So, all these things will be put in basket and a price will emerge from it,” Ngige said. The minister insisted that the Federal Government has finished with the organised labour on the issue of fuel price.
He also spoke on the issue of electricity tariff, saying that the meeting adopted the report of its Ad-hoc Technical Committee on Electricity Tariffs, made some adjustments and transformed the committee into an implementation committee, to implement all the recommendations made, including mass metering.
“You will start seeing members of the committee with the minister of power, going around now and making sure that the Discos install meters for people, because there are reports that they don’t want to be distributing meters and that they want to be doing bulk billing and estimated billings. So, we don’t want that.
“There is also a resolution as regards gas companies reducing gas pricing for gas sold to power companies, Gencos and the rest of them, so that the price of electricity per unit will go down and the consumers will benefit from it. We have given the marching orders for them to do so.
“Some paper work has to be done and once that is done, price of electricity will go down and once it goes down, the consumers will benefit”.
Ngige disclosed that the committee also recommended that those forcefully migrated by distribution companies from lower-paying bands C and D to upper bands A and B should petition the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) for reversal.