PPPRA deletes template announcing petrol price increase, keeps mum

IN what appeared to be a volte-face on its initial announcement that the price of Premium Motor Spirit, better known as petrol, has been increased by N50, the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency has deleted an earlier published template announcing that the new price of petrol has reached N212.6 per litre.

Though the agency did not give any reason for the action, it may not be unconnected with the outrage that greeted the announcement in some major cities across the country among other factors.

It was gathered that some Nigerians, predominantly made up of angry youth, had trooped to the streets in the wake of the announcement.

The deleted template was published on PPRA’s website, http://pppra.gov.ng/pms-guiding-price-for-march-2021/.

Apart from the expression of outrage by youth, the deletion came hours after the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation insisted that there was no increment in the ex-depot price of petrol.

The ex-depot price is the price at which the product is sold by the NNPC to marketers at the depots.

According to the (now deleted) template which the PPPRA released midnight, petrol is expected to sell at a lower retail price of N209.61 and at an upper retail price of N212.61. Nigerian marketers usually use the upper band for pump price.

The expected ex-depot price, as seen in the template, is N206.42, while the landing cost is N189.61.

With ex-depot price standing at N206.42 per litre, the March template (now deleted) showed that the landing cost for petrol per litre is N189.61.

But the PPPRA, in a seeming U-turn, deleted the template hours later. As of 9am on Friday, the template was still on the PPPRA’s website but when our correspondent checked at 10:30am, the template has been deleted. The website page showed ‘Page not found 404’ as of 10.30 am today.