President Bola Tinubu
Daily consumption of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) or petrol in Nigeria has dropped drastically under one year after President Bola Tinubu took over office on May 29, 2023.
Data obtained by Channels Television from the latest report of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Product Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) Daily Truck Out Report for August 2024, showed that consumption as of August 20, 2024, was 4.5 million litres per day.
The daily petrol consumption as of May 2023 was 60 million litres per day, according to the NMDPRA.
This brings daily consumption down by 92 per cent after May 29, 2023.
According to the report, shockingly, out of the 36 states of the federation, only 16 states got product allocation from the NMDPRA.
A breakdown of how NMDPRA distributed the products among the 16 states, Niger got the highest allocation of 21 trucks, amounting to 940,000 litres daily, Lagos got the second highest of 12 trucks amounting to 726,001 litres, and Kaduna got 12 trucks of 454,001 litres.
Other states such as Oyo got 12 trucks, Kano 9 trucks, Ondo 6 trucks, Kwara 6 trucks, Edo 4 trucks, and FCT 4 trucks.
The likes of Sokoto state received 4 trucks from the NMDPRA, Ogun state got 3 trucks, Osun 3 trucks, Gombe 1 truck, Benue 1 truck, Ekiti 1 truck and Kebbi 1 truck.
President Tinubu on May 29, 2023, declared an end to petrol subsidies, which at that time had gulped about N12tn in 10 years.
According to the president, payment of petrol subsidies was no longer sustainable as it had plunged the country into huge debts.
Petrol price has since skyrocketed from N195 per litre to about N1300 per litre, pushing up headline inflation to 32.70 per cent as of September, 2024, and cost of living rising, plunging 129 million Nigerians into poverty, according to the latest data by the World Bank.
Inflation reached an almost three-decade high of 34.19 per cent in June. It has since slowed to 32.7 per cent in September.
According to the global financial body, the over 129 million Nigerians represented a sharp rise from 40.1 per cent in 2018 to 56 per cent in 2024.
The World Bank report read, “With growth proving too slow to outpace inflation, poverty has risen sharply. Since 2018, the share of Nigerians living below the national poverty line is estimated to have risen sharply from 40.1 per cent to 56.0 per cent.
“Combined with population growth, this means that some 129 million Nigerians are living in poverty. This stark increase partly reflects Nigeria’s beleaguered growth record. Real GDP per capita has not recovered to the level it was at prior to the oil price-induced recession in 2016.
“The COVID-19 pandemic compounded this drop in economic activity. Moreover, growth is failing to outpace inflation: large increases in prices across almost all goods have diminished purchasing power.”
It added, “Multiple shocks in a context of high economic insecurity have deepened and broadened poverty, with over 115 million Nigerians estimated to have been poor in 2023. Since 2018/19, an additional nearly 35 million people have fallen into poverty, so that more than half of Nigerians (51.1 per cent of the population in 2023) are now estimated to live in poverty.”
A related report by a foreign news medium, AFP, also detailed how Nigerians have since abandoned their cars as a result of the pounding hardship.
“I parked it at my son’s house. I use public transport now,” Emmanuel, a 72-year-old retired health worker, told AFP. “It is not convenient, but it is what the economy demands.”
Car dealers in Lagos and Abuja told AFP that they had seen more and more people trading their fuel-guzzling cars and sports utility vehicles (SUVs) for more efficient vehicles to cut costs.
“People are actually selling their big cars these days,” Maji Abubakar, a car dealer in Abuja, told AFP. “The problem is that even if you put them on the market, there isn’t much demand for them.”
“It has been more than a year since I sold a car with an eight-cylinder engine, and the major reason is the price of petrol,” he added.
