The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, IPMAN, has opined that President Bola Tinubu has not shown much interest in revamping the nation’s refineries into its production state, adding that the President is seeking to apply wrong solutions in addressing the myriad of economic challenges facing the country. Mr. Joseph Obele, the Chairman of IPMAN, in Rivers State, spoke in Port Harcourt yesterday while reacting to the Nationwide Broadcast by President Tinubu. Obele recalled that Tinubu had in the broadcast mentioned billions of Naira budgeted for different palliatives, loans for Students, Free buses, and how they have saved over N1trillion from subsidy removal within a month.
Obele questioned why the president and his team cannot make meaningful investment in restoring the status of all the refineries in the country to address the issues of subsidy. The IPMAN chairman said the speech of the president lacked a good insight into how Nigeria can come out of the persistent economic mess, adding that the proposed palliatives would be faulty. He said “why won’t they just invest all the billions in fixing our refineries within few days. The truth is that, until we fix the Nigeria refineries, the price of fuel will be expensive since we are buying from the international market and the prices of other commodities will reflect as such.
“I’m beginning to think that Mr President has interest in the foreign refineries that Nigeria is buying Fuel from. In his 13 minutes speech, nothing was said about fixing Nigeria refineries, then I asked myself who are the advisers of Mr President? I will say on good authority that all the proposed palliatives will be in futility. Administrative experts will tell you that, if you really want to solve any problem, you must attend to the root cause of the problem. Until then, the Problem will continue. The address of Mr President doesn’t contain the solutions to Nigeria current economic conditions and the Problems, pains and Hardship will definitely continue until Nigeria refineries are functional.”
