The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva has said that Nigerians will get used to the deregulation of the pump price of petrol, just as they did with diesel and kerosene.
Sylva made the comment while addressing State house correspondents after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday.
He cited the case of heavy-duty trucks that transport food products to different parts of the country as consumers of diesel, while the Nigerian masses consume kerosene, both products have since been deregulated by the federal government.
“If you want to transport food from the north to the south, it will be by trucks that are run by diesel, not with petrol. Those trucks that transport food from the north to the south are usually run by diesel.
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“Kerosene is the preferred fuel at the lowest level of our society. These have been deregulated long ago. So, what is the problem with deregulating petrol, which is mostly used by the elite?
“If we have deregulated what they were using, then there is actually no reason why we should continue to subsidize petrol. I feel so. That’s my personal feeling.”
In March, the federal executive council sanctioned a monthly review of the price of petroleum products consistent with prices in the international market as a fallout of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Petroleum Products Marketing Company, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, recently increased the depot price of petrol to N155.17.
