By Chesa Chesa
The Federal Government has washed its hands off the petrol pump pricing face-off between the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and private refinery, Dangote Refinery, saying that both parties are at liberty to determine their own market prices for consumers.
Government’s position was made known on Wednesday by President Bola Tinubu’s special adviser on Information and Strategy, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, during a briefing of State House correspondents in Abuja.
He explained that since the petroleum market has been deregulated, both Dangote and NNPCL, as oil refiners and marketers, are allowed to operate according to economic market forces and set their prices for petrol, also known as Premium Motor Spirit (PMS).
Such scenario would be beneficial to Nigerian consumers in the end as competitive alternatives and pricing war tend to force prices down.
According to Onanuga: “The PMS price regime has been deregulated. Dangote is a private company. NNPC should not forget is a limited liability company.
“Whatever controversy both of them are having is their own problem. Even if you go by the by the terms of Petroleum Industry Act, NNPC is on its own. Even though it’s owned by the federal government, the state government and local councils and everything, it isoperating as a limited liability company.
“You can see that the private marketers have said that they find the NNPC or Dangote price too much for them, and they may resort to importing fuel.
“It is the consumers who benefit if a price war starts. If NNPC fuel is too much, the public market can go to the market and bring in their own fuel and sell at the price that they think is very reasonable and profitable for them.
“So, government is not dabbling into this controversy. Dangote is running a private company working on his own, and NNPC is a limited liability company that has the right to fix the price of its own product.”
Currently, the lowest pump price of petrol is N895 per litre, even as NNPCL and Dangote squabble over the exact cost at which the former buys the product from the latter, which has only opened its multibillion dollar refinery in Lagos.
