Rotimi Akeredolu, the governor of Ondo state, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to put an end to Nigeria’s raging fuel and cash shortages.
Governor Rotimi Akeredolu believes the ongoing crisis is doing more harm than good to the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
In a statement signed in Akure, the capital of Ondo State, on Friday, Akeredolu emphasized that Nigerians had been subjected to excruciating hardships caused, in large part, by the fabricated crisis in the petroleum sector.
He claimed that since late last year, dishonest participants in the petroleum product distribution chain had maintained artificial scarcity, leaving Nigerians defenceless and at the mercy of the oil companies.
He emphasized that the ongoing fuel and cash shortages across the country are eroding the federal government’s goodwill for the stability it has achieved over the last seven years.
In addition, the governor insisted that “there is no better way to de-market a brand than this ruthless execution of a pernicious motive,” which has devolved into a nationwide crisis.
Governor Rotimi Akeredolu said:
Nigerians have been living with scarcity of petroleum products for some time now. Fuel scarcity, a phenomenon which this current Administration had once confined to the dustbin in the chronicle of happenings in an inglorious past, has suddenly assumed a permanent feature of our daily existence and there appears to be no solution to the perennial crisis.
The Central Bank of Nigeria, through his Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, who purports to act under the powers conferred on the institution by the CBN Act, has chosen this period, when the country prepares for general elections, to redesign the currency notes for sundry reasons, chief among which is the need for the bank to be in control of the currency notes in circulation and checkmate the unwholesome activities of terrorists and their enablers and election riggers.
The choice of this period for the implementation of a policy, which bears an instant negative impact with no discernible mitigation in sight, raises serious suspicion of partisanship on the part of the CBN.
The ordinary people are the victims. Depositors can no longer access their monies even to feed their families. Hunger is not the anticipated result of a monetary policy.
He added:
Majority of Nigerians groan, at present, under the crushing weight of these crises.
There is pervasive discontent in the land and unless some urgent redemptive steps are taken to ameliorate the debilitating effects of seeming desultory and nonchalant disruptions of their normal simple lives, a series of events with unpleasant consequences is inevitable.
There is palpable anger engendered by frustration in the land. The wave of discontent increases with unbelievable rapidity across the country. The current hardship being experienced by the ordinary people forebodes unpleasant consequences. These crises may set in motion a chain of events the end of which is better imagined.
The Federal Government must make a categorical pronouncement on the availability of petrol and its price since it is the general belief that the country still pays humongous amounts as subsidy.
A situation which permits a few individuals to inflict pains on the populace, seemingly without check, is deplorable. The CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, must come clean on the new monetary policy. Nigerians are practically buying the country’s currency to feed when we are not in a state of war.
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