Buhari, govs set to meet on Thursday over fuel pricing —Minister

President Muhammadu Buhari and the 36 state governors will discuss the issue of fuel pricing Thursday.

The Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, announced this after a bipartite meeting of the Federal Government and the organised labour at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Sunday night.

Addressing journalists on their resolutions, Senator Ngige said the labour had investigated the report of the Technical Committee on Petrol Pricing Framework as agreed at the last meeting and made their submissions alongside the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

According to him, “The labour side saw that they were making some points and as I said, it is work in progress. Governors are going to discuss this on Thursday.

Read Also: No plans to increase petrol price -NNPC assures

“They have discussed this at the National Economic Council and so, everybody is involved because we find ourselves in dire straits. There is no money for subsidy.

“The NNPC has explained: What they are doing is import-dependent. Deregulation is import-dependent but they are doing bulk purchasing. So, they can get discounts.

“They are also using a foreign exchange that is discounted for them. They are not buying from the parallel market. So, all these things will be put in a basket and a price will emerge from it.”

The minister maintained that the Federal Government has concluded discussions with the organised labour on fuel pricing.

Also speaking on the electricity tariff, the minister announced that the meeting adopted the report of its Ad-hoc Technical Committee on Electricity Tariffs, made some adjustments and transformed the committee into an implementation committee, to implement all the recommendations made, including mass metering.

“You will start seeing members of the committee with the Minister of Power, going around now and making sure that the DISCOS put meters for people because there are reports that they don’t want to be distributing meters and that they want to be doing bulk billing and estimated billings. So, we don’t want that.

The Secretary to the Federal Government, Boss Mustafa appreciated the organised labour for their sacrifices at this time of economic difficulty, which has been rewarded with Nigeria’s exit from recession in the third quarter of 2020.

Meanwhile, the President of NLC, Comrade Ayuba Wabba and his TUC counterpart, Quadri Olaleye led the organised labour.