Saby Elemba in Owerri
President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria has been urged to build new refineries to stem rising prices of goods and services in the country.
Jude Njoku, a professor of agricultural economics and former vice chancellor, Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO), lamented the tremendous rise in the prices of goods in the country amidst a progressive inflation hike reaching 25.25 percent in June for food items.
Njoku said the government should urgently fx the old refineries and bring them back to life amid the growing levels of hardship, and also suggested that at least three greenfield refineries should also be built in a desire to see Nigeria becoming a hub in West Africa for the oil and gas industry.
In street markets in Owerri and rural communities, buyers and sellers bemoaned the tremendous rises in prices of consumer goods that have continued to cause daily dislocation in their brains.
Checks by Business A.M in the markets revealed that the increase in the prices of food items and other commodities are not peculiar to Imo State. Those who spoke to Business A.M., said that the rise in prices is attributable to the removal of fuel subsidy by President Bola Tinubu which has caused an increase in transportation and logistics in the country .
In a telephone response to questions, Njoku told Business A.M. that there is a very astronomical rise in prices of goods which has caused inflation in the country. And this, he said also, has been heightened by the removal of the fuel subsidy by President Bola Tinubu which has made the price of fuel and transportation cost very, very high. Providing an economic basis for the price rices, Njoku said: “Because transportation costs are very high, then prices of goods have become very, very high because all these commodities have to be moved either by road or by air or sea, but mainly by road. “And so the cost of transportation is added to food items and then transferred to the consumer and that is why our purchasing power has gone down tremendously.
“You go into the market now, what you could have bought with ten thousand naira some months ago, you now spend more than twenty thousand naira buying them. The same is applicable if you go into the supermarkets,” the professor added.
He noted that the daily changing prices followed the increase in the prices of fuel which have also affected transportation costs. When asked if there could be any solution to stem the rising prices of goods, he said: “Well, if we come from the angle of fuel prices, I think the biggest palliative which the government can give to Nigerians is to rebuild the refineries or build new ones so that the cost of fuel can come down.”
He continued: “Fuel prices are high because we are still exporting crude and refining outside. And when you export outside, you pay the cost of transportation out of the country. You also pay the cost of refining it there, you also pay the cost of transporting the refined products back to Nigeria with all the charges at the ports, the prices will be more than doubled.
“But if we build our own refineries and we are refining locally, then those costs wouldn’t be there. And the prices will come down more than 50 percent.
“Look at the Dangote refinery that they said would come on stream in July, up till now nothing is happening. It appears the government was deceiving us by saying, ‘don’t worry, by July, Dangote Refinery will start refining locally,’’ he lamented.
He stated that the Dangote Refinery has the capacity to supply more than our domestic needs. And that if the refinery does what we expected, the masses wouldn’t have this problem.
