ABUJA — SENATOR Badamosi Maccido (ANPP, Sokoto) has criticized petroleum marketers for again scorning the court ruling reverting the prices of petroleum prices to N38.50 even as he faulted government for deregulating the sector which he said enriches only a few. In an interview with Vanguard, Senator Maccido, vice-chairman of the Senate Committee on Labour who berated the Federal Government for rushing head on into its policy of deregulation without thinking out all the ramifications of the policy also criticized the marketers for not having any future plans of mitigating the pains on Nigerians through local refining of crude oil.
Senator Maccido spoke against the renewed increases of petroleum products just days after a court ruling asking the marketers to maintain the status quo. “I feel there is no sincerity in what the marketers are doing, they are not being truthful with Nigerians and so long as they are hiding something from Nigerians, there is no way Nigerians should continue to shoulder these incessant increases whether government sanctioned it or not.”
Carpeting the product marketers for just focusing on trading at the expense of the collective good, he disclosed that from observations of his Committee that the marketers had no intention of lessening the pains on Nigerians through effecting local refining of crude oil. “I think something drastic needs to be done, we need to look at the whole picture, not just the side of price itself. We need to look at the fact that these guys are just trading, they have nothing to offer Nigerians, they are just traders.
What I expect the marketers to do is to have the capacity to refine crude oil from Nigeria and sell to Nigerians not just importing these refined products.” It is not fair and from the last meeting that we had, there is no intention, there is no sign that the marketers will go into the business of refining crude oil. They have no intention of doing that and this bothers me, because it means that they will continue to import at dollar rate and continue to sell at that price.” Blaming the administration for the pains of the citizenry, Senator Maccido traced the problems to the government’s speed in evolving policies which he said are usually not well reflected on before implementation.”
