CHRICED Flays World Bank’s Projected PMS Price of N750

The Resource Centre for Human Rights & Civic Education (CHRICED) expresses its disagreement with the recent advice given by the World Bank, suggesting that the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) should be set at N750 per liter. We have serious concerns regarding this recommendation, and we question the motives behind it. It appears that the Nigerian government may have found a lackey in the World Bank, and is using their advice as a means to justify yet another planned increase in the price of PMS. In a speech widely covered by the media, the Bank’s Lead Economist for Nigeria, Alex Sienaert, stated that the current price of PMS does not reflect its true cost. As a result, the World Bank analyst concluded that N750 per liter would be the appropriate price for PMS to reflect its true cost.

For us at CHRICED, this is yet another instance of one of the Bretton Woods institutions offering advice, that would advance its imperialist economic agenda, while heaping more woes on the Nigerian people who are already reeling from the insensitive policies of the Bola Tinubu administration. Instead of allowing Nigerians to focus on the issues, which would put the economy on a sound and sustainable footing, the World Bank appears to be giving the justification to the government to further drain whatever is left of the economic lifeblood of millions of Nigerians. Any patriotic Nigerian would have expected that an institution with much information as the World Bank would have spoken on the need for Nigeria to revamp its local refining capacity in order to meet its domestic energy needs. Does this mean that the World Bank is comfortable with the current wasteful and extravagant model in which Nigeria spends billions of scarce foreign exchange on importing PMS, which could be locally refined? The fact that the World Bank is happily providing advice that essentially supports the capital flight associated with an import-dependent PMS supply system indicates that it does not have Nigeria’s long-term economic interests at heart.

It is also crucial to highlight that Nigerians have not experienced any of the supposed benefits promised by the government following the previous increase in the price of PMS. Numerous promises made to the Labour Movement and Nigerians by the government remain unfulfilled. An impartial observer would expect the World Bank, an institution that relies on ‘data and evidence’ for projections, to assess the impact of previous PMS price hikes before recommending another round of increment. CHRICED also anticipates that the World Bank, as an objective analyst of Nigeria’s struggling economy, would urge the Nigerian authorities to clarify how they utilized the savings from previous subsidy removal for important programs and policies. If these savings were properly utilized, as claimed by the government, they should have alleviated the suffering and hardship faced by the people.
As a result, CHRICED sees the World Bank proposal as enabling political leaders to impose further sufferings, pains and difficulties on Nigerian people. Moreover, CHRICED finds it perplexing that the World Bank’s statistics shows that the Nigerian government’s harsh and repressive policies have forced millions of Nigerians into extreme poverty, yet it tacitly supports a rise in the price of PMS. This idea, regardless of its rationale or justification, would only aggravate Nigerians’ economic misery, and is therefore distressing, vexatious and an instigation towards chaos if embraced by the Tinubu government.

CHRICED wishes to make it very clear that this manner of imperialist admonition is not needed by Nigerians. What Nigerians need our multilateral stakeholders to do is to support citizens to pressure the government to cut down the cost of governance, and to be accountable, efficient, and effective in its use of public resources. For a government that has shown more interest in spending scarce public funds on the lavish and luxurious tastes of the elite, to the detriment of welfare and wellbeing of the ordinary citizens, our international partners should not enable such a government to further squeeze and suffocate the people economically.