The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria,has cautioned the Federal Government against making excuses for frequent power failures in the country.
President of the union,Comrade Festus Osifo,who said this at the union’s National Executive Council(NEC) meeting in Lagos,on Thursday also carpeted the Federal Government over the frequency cases of grid collapse lately,noting that Nigeria witnessed over 12 cases of total blackouts last year on account of the hitches on the power grid.
He advised the government to stop giving myriad of excuses for the collapses,as Nigerians elected the current leadership to tackle challenges that would impact positively on the country’s governance structure.
He also said there was need for thhe country’s current leadership to appoint competent and qualified hands to man the power sector.
Nigerians,he said,are tired of trial and error in the choice of the hands that have been managing the country’s power sector.
He said the weakness of the country’s local currency was responsible for the spirally cost of petrol in the country.
He also said the product is likely to sale at more expensive prices if the local currencies continue to dwindle against other currencies,adding that the only factor that can arrest the prohibitive cost of petrol in Nigeria is drop in international price of crude.
According to him,the disturbing weakness of the country’s Naira explains the rising cost of petrol despite the birth of Dangote Refinery and the resuscitation of the country’s old Warri Refinery.
He advocated the need for the new Port Harcourt and Kaduna Refineries to also come on stream with a view to deepening the value chain in the country’s oil and gas sector.
He added that the full resuscitation of the state-owned refineries and the creation of the enabling environment for the private one to thrive would add value to the country’s Gross Domestic Products and create more job opportunities in the sector.
According to him,Nigeria should be deliberate,strategic and purposeful in driving the sector,as it has what it takes to produce 4million per barrels of crude oil in a day.
He scored the recent oil bid round conducted by the Federal Government high on the strength of its transparency and commercial viability which was historic in the history of sales of oil averages in the country.
He added that the transparency and commercial viability tied around the sales of the oil acreages will have multiplier effects on the country’s oil and gas sector.
He spoke on divestment of assets of multinational oil companies,saying the exercise has impacted the sector.
According to him,the union’s membership has continually increased in strength following the recent divestments by Shell, ExxonMobil and Nigerian Agip.
He said PENGASSAN will continue to monitor divestments by the bigger oil companies in order to strengthen the oil sector and protect the interest of its members.
On the proposed $30billion national budget for 2025, he said it was grossly inadequate to fix Nigeria’s infrastructure.
He advised that Nigeria should consider raising the budget mark to $200billion on account of it’s population size and ever-increasing needs to fix its social amenities.
He spoke on the tax reform bills,and punctured the jamboree-like approach to the conduct of public hearing by the National Assembly.
He also criticized the re-introduction of Value Added Taxes in the new bills,saying it’s an overkill.
