Tinubu's plan to scrap fuel subsidy sparks rush to stock up
GEORGETOWN - A 15-yearold girl who is accused of having started a fire at a school dormitory in Guyana last week was charged with 19 murders on Monday.
The fire killed 18 mostly Indigenous girls and one five-year-old boy in the building in the central city of Mahdia. The girl started the fire after her phone was confiscated, police said. –
REUTERS.
ABUJA - The first full day in power of Nigeria's new president has seen people panic buying fuel following an announcement to scrap a decades-long subsidy on petroleum products. In Monday's inaugural address, Bola Tinubu said the subsidy was "gone." But he gave no timeframe or any more details of this major policy move.
Yesterday, his team clarified that he meant the end of June and that the panic buying is "needless" as the policy will not take immediate effect.
President Tinubu wants to ease pressure on government finances, but ending the subsidy will increase the petrol price and impact other prices too at a time when inflation is already high.
In response to his comments on Monday, many filling stations hiked the petrol price while others stopped selling altogether.
Nigeria's state-owned oil company, the sole importer of petroleum products, assured the public that it has enough supplies.
But this did not prevent the panic buying, with most people fearing a drastic rise in the price of petrol which should be sold at the regulated price of 185 naira per litre (£0.32, $0.40).
Some people have posted videos online of filling stations already increasing prices, in some cases by more than 200 percent.
Some drivers of private buses, which many Nigerians rely on to get around, have also been unable to fill up their vehicles.
This has left people stranded at major bus stops in the capital, Abuja, and the country's biggest city, Lagos.
Despite its oil wealth, Nigeria is unable to refine enough crude to meet local demands so it imports petroleum products, which are then sold at a government-set price.
But the subsidy is a huge drain on public finances. Last year it gulped 4.3trn naira ($9.3bn; £7.5bn) and for the first half of this year, 3.36trn naira was budgeted for it.