While Governments around the world continue to explore and implement reliefs for their citizens affected by the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, it appears that the Nigerian Government is acting in the reverse direction. Since the beginning of gradual easing of the lockdown restrictions, government and its agencies in Nigeria have hiked prices and increased taxes to the consternation of the citizenry, groaning under the yoke of shut down businesses, decreased or disappearing income and general economic downturn. The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) after initially postponing a nearly 30 per cent hike in electricity cost, has finally authorised the electricity distribution companies to implement astronomical tariff prices beginning September 1. The Government has also announced hike in petrol prices from a range of\u00a0 N145 and N148 to a range of N157 and N162, to begin the implementation of what it calls final subsidy removal. Several other prices have been hiked by government agencies providing services to citizens in a manner suggesting competition among these agencies as to whom is the latest to do so. Citizens are in severe economic crisis, resulting from a general collapse in their businesses and income, with a government that has shown absolutely no care in providing relief for them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In response to public outcry, the Minister of Petroleum, Timipre Sylva described\nthe increase in petrol price as an \u201cinevitable decision\u201d on the part of\nthe Federal Government, as it will no\nlonger be fixing pump prices. He further stated that deregulation of the sector\nwas imperative for the growth of the economy. Sylva also noted that the\ngovernment can no longer fund fuel subsidy in the light of its dwindling revenue\ngeneration, occasioned by a drop in Nigeria\u2019s crude oil production rate to\n1.412 million barrels per day. Senior Special\nAdviser to President Buhari on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu and other members\nof President Buhari\u2019s cabinet have continued to laud the removal of fuel\nsubsidy and describe the increase in petrol prices as a long overdue\ndevelopment that is instrumental to\neconomic development. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While Governments around the world continue to explore and implement reliefs for their citizens affected by the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, it appears that the Nigerian Government is acting in the reverse direction. Since the beginning of gradual easing of the lockdown restrictions, government and its agencies in Nigeria have hiked prices and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[141,140,139,142],"class_list":["post-1690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-in-place-of-palliatives","tag-new-tariffs","tag-nigerian-government-imposes-price-hikes","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1695,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions\/1695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}