Director General, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Segun Ajayi-Kadiri, sees the price of fuel coming down to N800.

Dangote Petroleum Refinery slashed its ex-depot price for Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, also known as petrol, to N840 per litre.

The reduction represents a N40 decrease from the previous rate of N880 per litre.

This happened a few days after the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, increased the pump price of petrol to N925 per litre in Lagos.

This decrease is also coming a week after Dangote Refinery increased the ex-depot petrol price to N880 per litre

Speaking in an interview with Channels Television, Ajayi-Kadiri said that it was a welcome development, adding that price of the product would further decrease to N800 with the modalities being put in place by Dangote Refineries.

“You cannot blame anyone for producing and ensuring effective delivery,” he said.

When asked to share his thoughts from a manufacturer’s point of view on what he sees about the long term effect, he added, “So if I may use what the Gen Z is called ‘Joy is coming’, that’s what I see.

“The long term is going to be better. I see the price coming down to 800 and that’s what manufacturers want.

“I just told you now that last year, we spent as much as 1.1 trillion in terms of providing alternatives, apart from the fact that even the quality of the products is not guaranteed.

“So in the near future, I continue to see continued reduction in the price of diesel.

“I also see a situation where other players will be encouraged to come into the field, because that is what it takes. I don’t think that we should use sentiment to dissuade any investor from improving the life and well being of the people.

“You can imagine how many small and medium scale enterprises have had to close because they do not have access to electricity.

“We enjoyed only about 18 hours of supply last year, and there were at least three to four outages a day. It’s not good for production.

“But if you are able to have adequacy of supply of diesel and of even CNG gas across the across the country, I mean, this is a major improvement in one of the areas that manufacturers have suffered.

“40% of our cost of production is in energy, and there has been intense inadequacy of this.

“So I believe that there are better days coming, and we should continue to encourage more of Dangotes and for the government to even further incentivize Dangote so that we can completely crash the price as fuel, scarcity should be a thing of the past.

“This is the only time that our oil, our endowment, in terms of oil, is now a blessing to us and not a cause. So I believe that we should all give effective support, I mean, to this initiative,” he stated.