Timipre Sylva, Nigeria’s minister of state for Petroleum Resources, has said the Nigerian government will continue to interfere in determining the pump price of petroleum prices “to protect the generality of the public from undue exploitation and prevent inordinate profiteering by oil marketers”
Stressing that the government’s role in a deregulated economy was to provide consumers with a shield and that such a shield would “provide the Nigerian government through the operation of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory, PPPRA, which would use its price modulation mechanism to create a market-driven price regime.”
Sylva gave the insight in his Abuja office to explain why it appears that the government is preventing market forces from making full decisions about the price of PMS at the pump stations, even as the price is modulated monthly.
“Deregulation approved on the 19 March 2020, but PMS and other petroleum products are very strategic commodities, so you cannot allow the prices of these commodities to be determined wholly by the marketers,” the minister concluded.
