Nigerians in some parts of the country have resorted to using charcoal as the cost of Liquefied Petroleum Gas, otherwise known as cooking gas, has continued to skyrocket, Daily Trust can report.
This is just as the cost of charcoal has also risen owing to high demand, with some people switching to firewood.
Checks by Daily Trust in Abuja, Kano, Lagos and Jos, showed that citizens were filling a 12.5 kilogramme cylinder of cooking gas with about N18,000.
The Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers (NALGAM) had last year predicted that a 12.5kg cylinder would cost N18, 000 going by the frequent increases.
Last November, following a rise in the price of cooking gas per kg from about N700 to above N1,100, the Minister of State Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ekperikpe Ekpo, constituted a committee headed by the Chief Executive of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed, to come up with recommendations on how to boost supplies and crash the price within a week.
Despite that assurance, the price of cooking gas has continued to increase with a kilogramme selling for N1,400 in some parts of the country. This translates into 17,500 for a 12.5 kg cylinder.
The Special Adviser to the Minister on Media and Communications, Louis Ibah, neither answered phone calls nor replied text and WhatsApp messages sent to him by Daily Trust seeking to know what the government was doing to crash the price of cooking gas as promised.
The minister had, at a stakeholders’ consultative meeting in Abuja on February 6, listed the measures the government would take to bring down the price of cooking gas.
He said the government would prioritise the domestication and penetration of the LPG towards ensuring accessibility and availability for consumers; and increase upstream gas production to bridge supply and improve strategic economic sectors like gas to power, Gas-Based Industries (GBIs), and gas for export.
Credit: Daily Trust