The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has called on President Bola Tinubu to direct the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) to reverse what it termed the “illegal and unconstitutional” increase in the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) across its retail outlets.<\/p>\n
In a statement issued on Sunday by its Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare, SERAP also urged Tinubu to instruct the Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, and relevant anti-corruption agencies to probe allegations of corruption and mismanagement within the NNPCL. This includes investigating the spending of $300 million in bailout funds reportedly received from the Federal Government in August 2024, as well as the $6 billion debt owed to suppliers.<\/p>\n
The organization insisted that those responsible for corruption and mismanagement within the NNPC should be prosecuted if sufficient evidence is found, and any stolen funds should be recovered.<\/p>\n
“The increase in petrol prices violates constitutional guarantees and Nigeria’s international human rights obligations,” SERAP stated. It further emphasized that Nigerians have long been denied justice, and the ongoing corruption in the oil sector continues to burden the citizens.<\/p>\n
Part of the statement read, \u201cRather than implementing public policies that address the growing poverty and inequality, your government seems to be punishing the poor. The hike in petrol prices has made it even harder for impoverished citizens to meet their basic survival needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
SERAP argued that the price hike is avoidable and is a result of successive governments’ failure to tackle corruption in the oil sector, alongside the impunity enjoyed by those responsible. It claimed that corruption and lack of transparency in the NNPCL’s operations have led to unlawful price increases.<\/p>\n
\u201cHolding the NNPC to account for alleged corruption and mismanagement would serve legitimate public interests,\u201d the statement concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has called on President Bola Tinubu to direct the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) to reverse what it termed the “illegal and unconstitutional” increase in the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) across its retail outlets. In a statement issued on Sunday by its Deputy Director, Kolawole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":47564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47548"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47582,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47548\/revisions\/47582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}