The Director-General of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Ayo Omotayo, has predicted the fall of the price of petrol to N750 per litre before the end of 2025.
The NIPSS boss said this when he appeared on ‘Morning Brief’ on Channels TV on Tuesday.
The director-general said this would be made possible by the refining operations at Dangote refinery, as well as other local refineries.
“With the removal of the fuel subsidy, we have Dangote refinery coming on. We have other refineries. The refinery in Port Harcourt has worked continuously for 110 days if I’ve counted right. These are the short-term gains,” he said.
“We are buying fuel a little bit more expensive, but as we predicted at the National Institute that if we continue with what we are currently doing, fuel by itself will come down. We’re looking at it coming down as low as N750 before the end of the year.
“And of course, foreign exchange, we believe, will still drop to about 1.3 before the end of the year, and it is going to continue like that as more of our refineries come into place. We will become a net exporter in the long run.”
Omotayo said Nigerians would enjoy more benefits from the fuel subsidy removal. He added that the benefits will eventually “make up for whatever sacrifices we have made today”.
According to him, the federal government, in the short term, put in place palliatives so that “those who are suffering” would be able to make adjustments.
“We need to make adjustments to our spending. In the short term, yes. If you take the removal of subsidy on foreign exchange, you will see that now we do not have super-rich people making a premium off the dollars that are given to them,” he said.
“Everybody is in the fair marketplace, you go there if you need the dollar, go and look for no more restrictions. So everybody will have to adjust their spending and taste.”
