NCFront Rejects New Increase in Petrol Price

The National Consultative Front (NCFront) on Wednesday stated that it is incensed and aghast over President Muhammadu Buhari government's ‘inhuman ambush of Nigerians’ with an increase in the ex-depot price of petrol. It also said being a grassroots mass movement, it has observed the melancholic mood of Nigerians following the report that the Petroleum Products Marketing Company, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation ( NNPC), last Tuesday increased the ex-depot price of petrol from N138.62 per litre to N151.56 per litre. According to a statement issued by the group's Head of Bureau of Public Affairs, Dr. Tanko Yunuda, "With the ex-depot price being the amount at which the product is sold to marketers at the depots, it is a no-brainer that this unconscionable hike by the federal government will translate to an increase in the pump price of petrol thus worsening the woes of Nigerians who have just been yoked with an increased electricity tariff among other devastating policies of the government. "We utterly regret that the administration is carrying on as if its sole aim of seeking and acquiring another term of political power is to punish Nigerians for a supposed grouse that has remained unclear. Else, there's no other reason as to why a government would so prey on hapless citizens still battling with untold hardship foisted by COVID-19 lockdown. However, it is now up to Nigerians to join hands with NCFront leaders of conscience in emancipating themselves from a ruling class that can neither guarantee their security nor care about their welfare." The group explained that some of the litany of woes visited on Nigerian citizens by the Buhari government ranges from the serial increase in petroleum products since it came into power, jacking up of the Value Added Tax (VAT), introduction of stamp duties in all banking transactions, and the obnoxious, callous and unconscionable recent introduction of tax on all tenancy and lease agreements. NCFront lamented that "Nigerians, if nothing is done, can expect more vindictive economic policies tailored towards ensuring that the citizenry is pauperised into docility and submission to the administration's full-blown dictatorial proclivities. The recent punitive amount of N5 million for hate speech announced by the Minister for Information, Mr. Lai Mohammed, was another building block in the construction of the edifice for despotic rulership by the Buhari regime. "We believe that the impoverishment of citizens by the demobilising economic policies of the Buhari government is aimed at weakening Nigerians' resolve to challenge the ruling political at elections by making them docile, malleable and submissive to the Buhari regime.”