Mohammed Shosanya
Mrs Olu Arowolo Verheijen, the Special Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Energy,says the federal government is still intervening to prevent a market -driven price of petroleum products despite the removal of fuel subsidy on May 29,2023.
Verheijen,who disclosed this on Friday in Abuja,insisted that it is the prerogative of all governments to intervene intermittently in critical sectors of the economy to ensure price stability and forestall social chaos.
She told journalists that no government in the world,will allow prices of essential fuel to fluctuate out of control and push up inflation without some form of intervention, subsidy or no subsidy.
“The subsidy was removed on May 29, 2023. However, the government has a prerogative, whether in the US, in the West, Asia , all of them have a prerogative to maintain price stability. All government has prerogative to maintain price stability and not allow price to fluctuate. If prices fluctuate, they deserve the right to intervene to avoid social unrest. Even in the US , during the COVID there were a lot of expressionist groups,there were also subsidies.
” All government deserves that right. And so if the administration determines that given the hardship in the country, it is not the right time to allow prices to continue to fluctuate and cause inflation, the government has to intervene intermittently but it does not remove the fact that subsidy was removed ”
She spoke on the incessant hiccups experienced in the supply of electricity across the country, she admitted to some fundamental issues that must be addressed before the country can attract necessary capital and investment that will guarantee stable power , adding that Tinubu administration is walking the talking towards fixing the problem.
“When it comes to off grid ,we should realize that we are not yet ready to diversify the energy needs of electricity, especially off grid electricity, because of some underlying structural issues that needs to be addressed. The financial stability of that entire value chain is critical and has to be addressed, if we are to address the challenges and constraints that we have in transmission and distribution of power.
” Until we address some of these fundamental issues, ensuring that the Discos for example, make sure that all customers are metered and we extract some level of assurance of stability down the whole electricity value chain ,then we will not be able to attract capital into distribution, we will not be able to attract capital into transmission and also we will not be able to pay your current gas suppliers, or potentially your solar or hydro suppliers of generation capacity.
“So the fundamental issue we are addressing at the moment is to focus financial liquidity with technology intervention through the Presidential Metering Initiative for example, reviewing costs and structural issues that allow capital to flow into the entire value chain, and then allow us to diversify into biogas in the near future”.
According to her,the ambition of government is accelerate economic growth and diversify the
economy for the benefit of all Nigerians through credible, clear and consistent policy. She however pointed out that the administration is faced with a revenue crisis which is impacting negatively on all Nigerians.
“To urgently address this, President Bola Tinubu is actively seeking
ways to grow revenue and forex to stabilize our economy and
currency. The Oil and Gas sector is critical to our ability to do so.
However, our current oil and gas production and investment levels
falls significantly short of our potential”,she said.
