The Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate in the 2023 presidential election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has urged the federal government to invest massively in public transportation as a way of tackling the current petroleum crisis in the nation, stressing that Nigeria has not reached a level where every man and woman would own a car.
He advised the government to start treating the issue of fuel supply and energy as national security, just the way the United States of America, Russia and the United Kingdom are doing.
He frowned at the current petrol supply crisis facing Nigerians, as evidenced in the ever increasing pump price, insisting that it is the primary responsibility of the government, whether using market rules or policy tools, to ensure that petrol is available and reliably delivered to the nearest pump.
Still on the petroleum scarcity and its attendant problems, he said: “My own ideology is that we should continue to treat it as a national security, just the way the United States of America, Russia and the United Kingdom are treating it. If you treat it that way, then you will know that it is the responsibility of the government, using market rules or policy tools, to ensure that petrol is available and reliably delivered to the nearest pump and that it is not busting the budget.”
On how government can strike a balance in trying to have more vehicular movement on CNG in order to reduce the pressure on petroleum, Adebayo said: “If you look at the national gas policy and implement it, there are all kinds of ways we can utilise gas, including liquefied natural gas, compressed gas and others.
“What the government needs to do is to create a gas market that has incentives and to have converters on cars, which they have been saying for a long time. You can first clearly make it an automotive policy that every vehicle you want to have in Nigeria must be capable of using both petroleum and gas alternately.”
He also spoke on Dangote Refinery, on whether its operations could help to solve the petroleum crisis: “The problem of our politics is that we are equating an industry with a firm. Dangote is one refinery out of many. The fortunes of a country cannot rest with one company, unless you are doing prebendalism or chronic capitalism.
“If you are doing proper economic planning, the refinery that Dangote is bringing will just be one of the things you are adding to your energy supply chain. Even if the refinery was working, it would still give you logistical requirements because the refinery is at the corner of Lagos, so you still have to get it to Sokoto, Zamfara, Benue, Mubi in Adamawa State and wherever. So, the way I will look at it as a policy leader, is to give as much encouragement to a Dangote Refinery, but not peculiar to him.
“I will not politicise a private company’s business because what we must run away from in Nigeria is not to privatise the profit and socialise the loss, meaning the core centres are given to the taxpayer and the profit is given to private players.”
He, therefore, stressed the need to ensure that the nation’s refineries are working: “You also need to make sure that the refineries are not dead woods. They are not just core centres that are not performing. You need to make sure that the turnaround maintenance is done and the racket created around it where every government comes and spends money on it, comes to an end.”
Courtesy, Daily Sun
