The House of Representatives Speaker, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, has said that it will be illegal now for the Federal Government to remove fuel subsidy without constituting a Price Control Board in line with the Price Control Act.
Dogara, who spoke Monday in Abuja while receiving a delegation of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) that visited him, also described the perennial fuel shortage in the country as an embarrassment.
The speaker said the Price Control Act, which provides for the regulation of prices of some consumer products, including petroleum products, was yet to be repealed.
He added that for fuel subsidy removal to be effected, there must be a Price Control Board, which is the only body vested with the powers to remove petroleum products from the first schedule of the Act.
According to him, the only alternative way petroleum subsidy could be removed is for the National Assembly to amend or repeal the Petroleum Control Act.
“You talked about bringing this product at no cost to the government; that implies to me the removal of subsidy.
“Now, I have had this discussion on so many platforms but as a legislator, I can tell you there is something about subsidy removal that we are not looking at.
“There is a Price Control Act; if you look at the Price Control Act, section 4 talks about regulating or controlling the prices of products that are listed in the first schedule of that Act. One of the products listed in the first schedule is petroleum products.
“So, by law in this country, we must control the prices of petroleum products. But the law as passed by the parliament gives a window and prescribes and vested the responsibility of adding up items on the schedule of the given items to the Price Regulating Board; and I am not sure we have that board in place.
“So, for any discussion then to be meaningful, you have to put pressure on the executive. It is not the legislature’s work to constitute the board.
“The board has to be put in place in line with the provisions of that law; so as soon as the board is constituted, the members of the board can remove petroleum products from the schedule of the act; in that way, subsidy is gone.
“But in the absence of that, the only other alternative is for the National Assembly to amend the Act removing petroleum products as one of the products in the schedule to the Act or repeal the Act altogether.
“These are the only two avenues by which subsidy can lawfully be removed. Any other way will be ultra vires in abolishing subsidy; that is the truth.”
He urged IPMAN to put pressure on the Federal Government to set up the Price Control Board so that discussions on the removal of subsidy could commence in earnest.
On the controversial Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), the speaker assured the delegation that as soon as the House resumes full legislative activities, it would step up efforts to complete work on the proposed law.
The speaker also expressed concern that Nigeria, being an oil-producing country, is always experiencing fuel shortage.
“I don’t know if there is any country that produces the kind of oil that is produced in Nigeria that refines its products outside its own shores. For me, it is kind of illegal; this is most inexcusable because we have turned this nation into a laughing stock,” he added.
Earlier, the President of IPMAN, Chinedu Okoro, had said the association, in conjunction with partners from Peru, had concluded plans to inject a total of $4 billion into the construction of two refineries in the country.
He stated that the building of the refineries would reduce the incessant shortage of petroleum products.
Okoro said the refineries would be located in Kogi and Bayelsa states.
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