Headline

Fuel Price Hike: Oil Marketers Rake In Over N21.8bn Daily

Published

4 months ago

June 4, 2023

Oil marketers in Nigeria may have made an excess of N21.8834 billion in a day following the removal of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) popularly called petrol or fuel investigation by Saturday Telegraph has revealed.

President Bola Tinubu had in his inaugural address as the 16th President of Nigeria declared that the petrol subsidy was gone.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) subsequently increased its petrol pump price template from between N184 and N194 to between N488 and N550. Using the last published PMS weekly evacuation and dispatch report of NNPCL, the average daily evacuation/dispatch for the week of April 1-7, 2023 was 68.39 million litres; while that of the week of 25th to 31st March 2023 was 73.71ml.

With the addition of 68.39 million litres and 73.71ml, the total is 142.10ml resulting in an average of 71.05ml. The NNPCL stations prior to the price adjustment sold at the pump price of about N184 while some marketers sold at an average of N200. The average of the two is N192. Multiplying the estimated 71.05ml by N192 equals N13.6416 billion.

With the current template, using N500 as a base will give a total of N35.525 billion. Subtracting N35.525trn from N13.6416 equals N21.8834 billion But the Executive Secretary of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria, (MOMAN), Mr Clement Isong, in an interview with Saturday Telegraph, said the NNPCL did not make extra profit.

He stated that NNPCL was selling at a subsidised rate instead of the actual cost but is now selling at the actual market rate. Isong also explained that other marketers should not sell their stock at such a price that they would not restock at the same quantity.

He noted that it is important for businesses to stay afloat rather than for the operators to sell at a loss, go out of business and become poor and hungry. Isong said: “NNPCL’s old stock was bought at a higher price and they were selling it at a subsidised rate.

“The old stock was not cheaper. It was higher. They were buying at N10 for instance and were selling at N5. “If you say they have old stock, was the old stock not N10? Are you suggesting that they should continue to take the loss that has reached about N2.7 trillion or lose more? “That old stock was more expensive than what they were selling it and now they want to sell the old stock at the correct price so that they can reduce the burden on the country and the burden on our collective future.

“With respect to the man that has one filling station, to buy a truck of PMS costs him about N8.3 million. “Maybe his profit was N300,000.00. Today that product is N488 in Lagos multiplied by 450,000 litres in a truck, which is N22m. Where will he find the N22 million to replenish his stock if he sells at N8 million? “Every businessman, buys, sells, and monitors his replacement cost so that he will have working capital to stay in business.

“If he finishes selling the product at N8m and so does not have money to buy the next quantity of stock, will he keep the N8 million in a bank account, sit down and have nothing to do? “The station will be dry. Businessmen that behave like that are the ones that run out of business. Every good trader, in any business line, in the world, knows this.

“It is not the profit that you are looking at, it is your continuing in business that you are looking at and you need the working capital to buy what you are selling, whether it is shoes, trousers, cars or food. “If you do not generate the money to buy your replacement stock, especially when the jump is this high, that businessman will run out of business and nobody will pity him.

He will only pity himself. “He has to look after himself. He has to be in business and if at the end of the day, he goes out of business, it will not be good. We want him to stay in business. “We do not want him to run dry and become another hungry mouth in Nigeria.”

Headline

Diphtheria: Children at risk as 7,202 cases are confirmed in Nigeria

Published

20 mins ago

September 30, 2023

Ifunaya Emeka

A staggering 7,202 cases of diphtheria, a highly contagious bacterial infection that can be fatal without treatment, were confirmed in Nigeria last week.

The outbreak has been particularly severe among children under 14, with three-quarters of cases (73.6%) in this age group.

Most cases have been recorded in Kano state, Nigeria’s second most populous state. In the past three months, there have been 453 deaths from diphtheria in Nigeria.

Diphtheria is a vaccine-preventable disease, but low vaccination rates in Nigeria have made the outbreak possible. Only 42% of children under 15 in Nigeria are fully protected from diphtheria.

Diphtheria symptoms begin with a sore throat and fever. In severe cases, the bacteria produce a toxin that can block the airway, causing difficulty breathing and swallowing. The toxin can also spread to other body parts, causing heart kidney problems and nerve damage.

Save the Children is launching a wide-scale health response in the three most impacted states of Kano, Yobe, and Katsina. The organization is deploying expert health and supply chain staff to help overstretched clinics detect and treat diphtheria cases and to support mass vaccination campaigns.

However, Save the Children warns that a mass vaccination campaign will only be successful if the vaccine shortage is urgently addressed.

Severe shortages in Nigeria of the required vaccine and the antitoxin needed to treat the disease mean that the situation could continue to escalate, placing many children at risk of severe illness and death.

Headline

WHO releases $16m to tackle cholera, says Director-General

Published

1 day ago

September 29, 2023

Ifunaya Emeka

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has released 16 million dollars from the WHO Contingency Fund for Emergencies to tackle cholera.

Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General said this during an online news conference.

Ghebreyesus said that the organisation was providing essential supplies, coordinating the on the ground response with partners, supporting countries to detect, prevent and treat cholera, and informing people how to protect themselves.

“To support this work, we have appealed for 160 million dollars, and we have released more than 16 million dollars from the WHO Contingency Fund for Emergencies.

“But the real solution to cholera lies in ensuring everyone has access to safe water and sanitation, which is an internationally recognized human right,” he said.

According to him, in the previous week, WHO published new data showing that cases reported in 2022 were more than double those in 2021.

He said that the preliminary data for 2023 suggested was likely to be even worse.

“So far, 28 countries have reported cases in 2023 compared with 16 during the same period in 2022.

“The countries with the most concerning outbreaks right now are Ethiopia, Haiti, Iraq and Sudan.

“Significant progress has been made in countries in Southern Africa, including Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, but these countries remain at risk as the rainy season approaches,” Ghebreyesus said.

According to him, the worst affected countries and communities are poor, without access to safe drinking water or toilets.

He said that they also face shortages of oral cholera vaccine and other supplies, as well as overstretched health workers, who are dealing with multiple disease outbreaks and other health emergencies.

On COVID-19, Ghebreyesus said that as the northern hemisphere winter approaches, the organisation continued to see concerning trends.

He said that among the relatively few countries that report them, both hospitalisations and ICU admissions have increased in the past 28 days, particularly in the Americas and Europe.

WHO boss said that meanwhile, vaccination levels among the most at-risk groups remained worryingly low.

“Two-thirds of the world’s population has received a complete primary series, but only one-third has received an additional, or “booster” dose.

“COVID-19 may no longer be the acute crisis it was two years ago, but that does not mean we can ignore it,” he said.

According to him, countries invested so much in building their systems to respond to COVID-19.

He urged countries to sustain those systems, to ensure people can be protected, tested and treated for COVID-19 and other infectious threats.

“That means sustaining systems for collaborative surveillance, community protection, safe and scalable care, access to countermeasures and coordination,” he said.