TheCable

Ibe Kachikwu, the minister of state for petroleum resources, says “liberalising” of the oil sector, will force the pump price of fuel, which currently trades at N145, to drop in six months.

Kachikwu said this on Thursday when he appeared as a guest on Sunrise Daily, a breakfast programme on Channels Television.

“We mean well and Nigerians should please trust us. Give us a chance, you will be surprised what will become of your PMS price over the next six to eight months,” he said.

“As it gets better and it gets to a point where we find that the market has stabilised in terms of supply, we will begin to pull back a bit in terms of determinants for pricing.”

He said the authorities had done all it could to end the ongoing scarcity, and just could not provide foreign exchange for the importation of fuel.

“You don’t give what you don’t have. We want Nigerians to understand that we feel the pain, and we have tried to avoid it since I came in October,” he said.

“We first went on to the issue of the subsidies that we inherited which, by the way, were based on 50 to 55 million litres consumption, and we said the number looked bloated. So, we did an experiment and came to a conclusion that this country doesn’t consume more than 45 million litres a day.

“Then we came to a second point and said we are not even going to have subsidy again. We are going to exit it because there was just too much fraud involved in it.

“We have struggled, queues continue to go and they are back. And it will continue to happen unless we address the issues.

“If you free up Nigerians to find sources of funds, they will find those secondary funds. They will import the product; the burden on the NNPC will reduce and the country will have peace and subsidy will go away permanently.”