Flood the market with fuel, prices will fall – Bishop Adeleye
By, Vitalis Ugoh, Calabar
The Anglican Bishop of Calabar, Bishop Tunde Adeleye, has said the solution to the current agitation for the removal of oil subsidy is the flooding of petroleum products into the market and the prices would stabilize automatically.
Adeleye stated this in Calabar while speaking to newsmen on his expectations in 2016 from the Federal Government as a Clergyman.
He said whether the subsidy is removed or not, this will not stop those involved in selling the petroleum products especially fuel at higher pump price. Rather, he said, if government can make fuel available in every filling station, then the pump price will stabilize.
Adeleye declared, “When it is not made available, anything can happen”, adding that” if we want the price of fuel to go down, the answer is by flooding the market with enough of the products”.
He also called on the Federal Government to encourage private investors to establish their own refineries to complement existing ones in the country.
By so doing, pump price of fuel will certainly come down whether there is removal of fuel subsidy or not, adding that “when there were few banks in Nigeria, it became very difficult for civil servants/businessmen and women to open an account. Today, he said, there are banks everywhere. Some banks staff are seen going from house to house to beg people to come and open an account with them.
He also gave a typical example of the GSM world, where sim cards were bought as much as N24,000 then, but today a sim is sold at N100 with credit inside it to make calls before recharging.
Competitive environments, brings about healthy competitions and stabilizes prices too, he added.
“As it is, petrol is sold between N140 to N130 per litre depending on the state you are buying from when the subsidy has not been removed”, he added.
However, he said, that he heard that from January 1, 2016, the Federal Government had directed that fuel pump price will stand at N86.50 for marketers while NNPC will sell at N86.00.
Analyzing 2015, he said there were two leaderships between January to May 29, 2015 while between June to December there was another leadership making it very difficult to compare.
He said that there were fears in the whole country before the elections, but God decided to put a stop to the impending bloodshed and catastrophe that could have befell the nation.
God, he added, had a finger in this country, though “I cannot say that the issues have remarkably improved. Surviving that tension is a very remarkable experience”.
On Boko Haram, he thanked God for helping the Federal Government to achieve what it had achieved so far in controlling the insurgency in the North East of this country.
On the Economy, he expressed joy that Mr. President had admitted that there is a problem. The economy, he added, has not improved yet.
According to him, “the Nigerian masses were yet to see the dividends of democracy as promised during the electioneering campaigns. We have fought corruption in this country and everybody is seen as been corrupt. We need some kind of comfort and security in this country”.
He said that “Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gunpowder. The youths are jobless. The youthful ages of most Nigerians are useless and wasted. Don’t mortgage our food and future of our children to the extent that they know that we cannot feed them any longer”.
Adeleye said “a situation where our children have a very big distrust on their parents is a very big disservice to the nation”.
He still believed that true federalism is the answer to the numerous problems of this nation and called on all and sundry to accept the concept of making the centre too powerful, adding “unless the power in the centre is reduced, people will continue to ask for republics like the agitators of Biafra”.
