The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), has declared that it is apparent that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not interested in revamping the nation’s refineries into its production state.
IPMAN specifically said that President Tinubu was only seeking to apply wrong solutions in addressing the myriad of economic challenges facing the country.
The Chairman of IPMAN in Rivers State, Mr. Joseph Obele, who stated these in Port Harcourt on Tuesday while reacting to the Nationwide Broadcast by President Tinubu, noted that Tinubu in the broadcast, mentioned billions of naira budgeted for different palliatives without any plan for any meaningful investments in restoring the nation’s refineries as a more concrete means of addressing the issues of subsidy.
He said while IPMAN has nothing against the palliatives in form of loans for Students and Free buses, savings of over N1 trillion from subsidy removal within a month, the question of revamping of the nation’s refineries remains the most important but unfortunately, the President and his team deliberately avoided it.
The IPMAN also said that the speech of the president lacked a good insight into how Nigeria can come out of the persistent economic mess, stressing that the proposed palliatives would be faulty.
In the words of Obele; “Why won’t they just invest all the billions in fixing our refineries within few days? The truth is that, until we fix the Nigeria refineries, the price of fuel will be expensive since we are buying from the international market and the prices of other commodities will reflect as such.
“I’m beginning to think that Mr President has an interest in foreign refineries that Nigeria is buying Fuel from. In his 13 minutes speech, nothing was said about fixing Nigeria’s refineries. I then asked myself, who are the advisers of Mr President?
“I will say on good authority that all the proposed palliatives will be in futility. Administrative experts will tell you that if you really want to solve any problem, you must attend to the root cause of the problem. Until then, the problem will continue.
“The address of the President doesn’t contain the solutions to Nigeria’s current economic conditions and the problems, pains and hardship will definitely continue until Nigeria’s refineries are made functional,” he stressed.
