Presidential Candidate of the Accord Party, Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has said that Nigerians should not have to pay more than N605 per litre of petrol under an Accord administration, arguing that the price could eventually fall to as low as N200 per litre if Nigeria gets its production costs and exchange rate right.
Hashim said the proposed price would represent a starting sustainable price, not an artificially-subsidised price, and insisted that the reduction would not come at the expense of government revenue or Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) revenues.
“N605 per litre is our starting sustainable price for petrol. Nobody will buy petrol above N610 under our government. It could be as low as N200.”
He said that the key to achieving the price was not another opaque subsidy regime but a fundamental correction of what he described as Nigeria’s distorted petroleum cost and accounting structure.
Hashim, who has consistently opposed the removal of petroleum subsidy, described the previous justification for subsidy removal as “accounting magic”, arguing that Nigeria must first establish the genuine cost of producing, refining, transporting and distributing petrol before declaring that government is subsidising consumers.
