The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described the fresh hike in the price of fuel and electricity tariff by the Federal Government as callous, cruel and punishing.
This is as it challenged the All Progressives Congress (APC) led administration to publish the parameters that led to the fresh increase.
Asserting that the increase was unacceptable to the party, the PDP insisted that Nigerians are not supposed to pay more than N100 per liter for petrol.
The statement which was signed by the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, on Wednesday, demanded an immediate reversal of the prices to avert a national crisis.
He said the increase will result in upsurge in costs of goods and services and worsen the biting hardship being faced by Nigerians, who are already impoverished and overburdened by APC-imposed high cost of living in the last five years.
Ologbondiyan warned the APC that “it is pushing Nigerians to the wall with its obnoxious and anti-people proclivities,” adding that the peaceful and law-abiding nature of Nigerians should not be taken as weakness.
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The statement read further: “Our party asserts that by increasing the price of fuel from the N87 per litre it sold under the PDP to an excruciating N151 while at the same time allowing the hike in electricity tariff from N30.23 per kwh to over N66, the APC has left no one in doubt that its agenda is to inflict pain and hardship on Nigerians to satisfy their selfish interests.
“The unjustifiable increase in the price of these essential supplies, coming barely a week after the APC brazenly posted a support for fuel price hike, while attempting to rationalize the excruciating hardship being suffered by Nigerians under the Buhari administration, has further confirmed that the APC is at the center of the harsh policies of the Buhari Presidency.
“It is distressing that the APC administration increased the cost of essential commodities at the time the leadership of other countries are offering palliatives to their citizens to cushion the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is instructive to add that our nation is doomed under the APC watch.
“We know that the APC is an unfeeling party but it is indeed shocking that it could go to the extent of approving such a hike at this trying time, when many Nigerians are struggling to afford staple foods and other necessities of life.
“Our party challenges the APC and the Buhari administration to publish the parameters with which it arrived at the increase of fuel price to N151 per liter given that with the prevailing values in the international market, the appropriate price template for domestic pump price in Nigeria ought not to be above N100 per liter.
“Our fear is that the APC is pushing Nigerians to the wall with its obnoxious and anti-people proclivities and we caution that nobody should misinterpret the peaceful and law-abiding nature of Nigerians as a sign of weakness.
“Our party therefore restates our call on the National Assembly to save the nation by calling the APC and its administration to order before they plunge our nation into chaos.”
