Fuel price, electricity tarrif: Have mercy on Nigerians – Onaiyekan, Kaigama urge FG
As northern group threatens resistance
Catholic clerics, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Abuja Catholic Diocese, Dr. Ignatius Kaigama and his predecessor, Emeritus Archbishop of Abuja, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, have urged the federal government to rescind its decision on the recent increases in fuel price and electricity tariff.
They said yesterday in Abuja that this would make life comfortable for Nigerians who are already finding it difficult to survive.
They spoke on the side lines of the maiden General Assembly of the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja with the theme; “Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja: Together in Evangelization”.
According to Kaigama, the federal government must have mercy on the poor and needy who constitute a large number of Nigerians, and government is capable of finding better solutions that would not exert more hardship on the citizenry.
“I can only beg on behalf of the poor and the needy that government should have mercy on us. We are at the grassroots and I meet people who are really poor and in need and with all these increases it makes life more intolerable.
“As a priest, I can only pray that God will do something for the poor and needy but God doesn’t operate in a vacuum, he uses our leaders, the president, the governors, local government chairmen, I know they can do something. Let them just look at the poor and the needy with the eyes of mercy and strategize, there is a way out, they can be help. As a witness, people are in agony and are suffering, government is their father, government is their leader, let them do something,” Kaigama said.
On his part, the ArchBishop Emeritus, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, who berated the present administration for failing to live up to its promises, noted that Nigerians deserved to live better lives.
“Mr. President, in the same breathe, was telling us he was going to do all he could to make life easier for Nigerians and one of the things he can do is those increases. Fuel price increase, electricity increase should be put in a wider context. We would not be complaining about fuel price increase if the salaries were also increased.
“The problem comes when you leave the people with nothing to eat, I don’t think government is supposed to be doing that. They should find a way to make life liveable for Nigerians,” Onaiyekan said.
Northern coalition threatens popular resistance
The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) has asked the federal government to immediately reverse the price of fuel to the earlier N145 per litre and the electricity tariff which it recently increased.
CNG spokesman, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, said yesterday that the group would not hesitate to put the public on alert for a possible prolonged nationwide resistance in the event of government opting to ignore the demand.
He urged the government to further assure Nigerians of regularity in quality and quantity of supply, assume full control of commodity pricing, jettison all aspects of unwarranted taxation, halt the current multi sectoral extortions by multinational service providers, banks and other financial institutions’.
“The recent announcement of the federal government’s decision to hike the prices of such essentials as petroleum products and electricity has ignited widespread discontent and anger across every segment of the Nigerian society.
“Concerned about this mounting national anger, the Coalition of Northern Groups met in Kaduna to review the alarming rise in the cost of living in the face of pervasive poverty and fast spreading general insecurity of lives and property.
“The meeting was also to underscore the failure of public policies on the key pillars required for building a strong national economy, security, unity and survival, which have resulted in enormous hardship to vast segments of the Nigerian population,” he said.
He noted that whereas the present administration had upon inception identified economic revival and security as major components of the three pillars of its change agenda, its entire national economy and law and order assets appear incapable of arresting an imminent drift towards poverty and the likelihood of the setting in of anarchy.
He added, “The government’s mismanagement of an economy already adjudged in a second recession is characterized by significant loss of output, massive youth unemployment, a rising level of poverty, instability, and irregular migration of skilled and unskilled labour.
“Despite the administration’s claims to fighting a war against corruption, the entrenchment of mediocrity has left the country worse than it was five years ago in the global corruption perception index.
“The present administration has been tolerated for too long even with its level of impunity in the dispatch of goods and services which gravely endanger the peace, unity and development of the country.
“The administration’s audacious impunity climaxed with hikes in fuel pump prices from an initial N87 to N151.50k per litre, electricity tariff from N22 to N66 and Value Added Tax (VAT) to 7.5% from 5%-these unjustified and unjustifiably indiscriminate increases with concomitant effects on life sustaining essentials like foodstuff and foreign exchange rates have resulted in exponential escalation of inflation, despair, crime and criminality.”
He decried the increase in commodity prices since the coming of the present administration.