Why Nigerian oil prices remain static

SIR: I address this issue from two perspectives: the moral and the economic. First, when prices go up do people ask the president to increase the price? The answer is a resounding no. That’s not a justification, though. One of the most intriguing things about Nigerians is our shortlived impatience and ‘today today’ solution. We fail to appreciate the fact that Nigeria imports petroleum. The destruction of the economy was inherited by GEJ. So diversifying the economy is a burden he has to bear. Therefore, repositioning the economy needs us to recoup more from oil and channelling it to other sectors. 

   The immediate reason is that importers take projections in their importation. A trader may decide to import products at X amount and store them. There’s the cost of storage and freight. The storage lasts months to exhaust. If these men are forced to sell at the current price, they would lose a lot of money and may run out of business. This may result in gross unemployment and dependency.

  What one should expect is that the masses would have representatives such as labour unions who would do an inspection of the stored products and say this is how long this product would last and from this period we are expecting the government to reduce the prices. 

• Alex Agbo,

e-mail: aagbo10@gmail.com,

aagbo10@yahoo.com