‘Incessant fuel price hike is Tinubu’s agenda to empower cronies’ – HURIWA

Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has said that the incessant hikes in the pump price of fuel was simply President Bola Tinubu’s selfish agenda to empower his cronies.

“The truth and nothing but the truth is that the policy of incessantly hiking the pump price of fuel and petroleum products were never meant to benefit the commoners of Nigeria,” a statement signed by Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA ‘s national coordinator, said.

“The primary goal is to financially reward friends of those holding sway in the current administration, their cronies or business affiliates.

“The hikes in the costs of fuel have only brought instability in the prices of essential food items and the inability of millions of absolutely poor households in Nigeria to buy their essential food items, has resulted in malnutrition of hundreds of thousands of children, mass hunger, increasing number of out-of-school children, and starvation and untimely deaths.

“Whereas most poor Nigerians perish in unmitigated poverty and unpredictable high costs of living, only very few people running businesses in the oil and gas sector are making a kill by way of profits as data and statistics made available at the weekend have shown this irrefutable fact.”

Advertisement

The rights association appealed to oil and gas companies to roll out corporate social responsibility initiatives to economically empower millions of increasingly impoverished Nigerians.

The group said that failure to do this, the business climate of Nigeria will become perilous and dangerous because “if the poor can’t sleep because they are hungry, the rich can’t sleep inevitably because the poor, angry people are awake”.

HURIWA further endorsed the claim by the Nigerian labour Congress, NLC, that marketers, including Dangote Refinery, have colluded to inflate the costs of fuel. It called on Nigerians to increase public pressure on the National Assembly to investigate the allegation of collusion and inflating of cost of fuel.

Newspot reports that the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, had at the weekend accused Dangote Group and oil marketers of ganging up to rip Nigerians off in the pricing of PMS.

NLC disclosed this in a communiqué on Sunday after its National Executive Council meeting held on Friday.

The union called on the Nigerian government to immediately activate the Port Harcourt Refinery and other government-owned refineries.

HURIWA which cited publicly available data, stated that as a consequence of the incessant increase in price of fuel and other products, a total of six oil and gas companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) generated N2.97 trillion revenue in nine months of 2024.

This represents an increase of 115 per cent increase from N1.39 trillion generated in corresponding period of 2023.

Profit before tax stood at N626.3billion, about 384 per cent increase from N129.43 billion reported in nine months of 2023.

“The Federal Government must stop implementing crude measures that unleash hardships on Nigerians whilst at the same time making very few people and companies too rich and prosperous from the hunger, starvation and untimely deaths of Nigerians,” HURIWA added.

“Government must restore the dignity and the respectable value of the Naira to stop the downward collapse of the value of the National currency.”