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B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News |
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NMA faults increase in fuel prices, warns against health implications
THE Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has expressed disappointment that despite previous appeals on the need to maintain the prices of petroleum products at affordable level, the Federal Government had again raised fuel prices by 27 per cent.
In a statement yesterday, NMA president and Secretary-General, Drs. Wole Atoyebi and Olukayode Akinlade, lamented that the government had raised the prices unmindful of the health implications to Nigerians and the other sectors of economy.
The statement noted: "It is disheartening that despite the fact that Nigeria is the 5th largest OPEC oil-producing country in the World, more than 70 per cent of its citizens still live on a parlous sum of less than $1 day!
"It is obvious to all well-intentioned and reasonable people that most Nigerians have been struggling to keep pace with the old price. Certainly, Nigerians cannot afford this new price increase."
According to the statement, going by the World Health Organisation's (WHO) definition of health as "a state of complete physical, social and mental wellbeing, and not just the absence of disease or infirmity", the health implications of the increase in fuel prices are "enormous."
The doctors submitted: "It goes without saying that this new price increase will pauperise Nigerians the more and consequently engender ill-health. Indeed it is a well-known fact that poverty worsens ill-health and more ill-health creates more poverty.
"In a situation where the Nigerian human development index is 187 out of 191 member nations, according to UN chart on Human Development (2004), the implications of the above are catastrophic!
"One would have thought that in a country where the 2004 budget projection was based on far less than $20 a barrel, but is now selling for as much as $50 a barrel; and where the nation's external reserve is said to be in excess of $13 billion, a sensitive government ought to have evolved a cushioning effect, rather than visit this vicious act on hapless Nigerians. After all, governance is all about making life more comfortable to the citizenry."
The association again appealed to government to "hearken to the voice of reason" as being expressed by other well-meaning Nigerians, including traditional rulers, to "rescind this obnoxious and anti-people decision."
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