Mr Paul Ibe, media adviser to former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on Wednesday faulted the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Heineken Lokpobiri, over his comparison of petrol prices in Nigeria and the United States.
Ibe said Lokpobiri’s comparison was “a textbook example of how statistics can obscure economic reality when stripped of income and purchasing power.”
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), in a television interview on Tuesday, said: “Our petrol price is lower than that of the US. The United States is the highest producer of crude oil and one of the countries with the highest number of refineries. Today the price in the US is higher than that of Nigeria.”
However, Atiku’s media aide said telling a Nigerian earning N70,000 a month that petrol is “cheaper” because an American pays a higher dollar price per litre ignores how much petrol each worker can afford from their earnings.
“At about N1,400 per litre, Nigeria’s N70,000 minimum wage buys only 50 litres of petrol. By contrast, four weeks of earnings at the US federal minimum wage can buy roughly 981 litres at prevailing American pump prices.
“That is the comparison Nigerians should be looking at. Americans may pay a higher nominal price for petrol, but they also earn substantially more. Nigerians are buying petrol from wages already battered and shattered by high food prices, transport costs, rent, electricity, healthcare and the collapse in the purchasing power of the naira,” Ibe said.
He said because Nigeria depends heavily on road transportation and generators, expensive petrol does not stop at the filling station but feeds directly into the prices of food, transportation and production, as well as household expenses.
“So the real question is not whether a litre of petrol costs more in America. The real questions are: how many litres can the average Nigerian afford from his income? How much is left after food, rent and transportation? Absolutely nothing. Indeed, it leaves a deficit!
“And is the average Nigerian household better off today? A government cannot establish that petrol is affordable simply by converting the pump price into dollars and pointing to another country where the nominal price happens to be higher.
“Affordability is measured against income, purchasing power and cost of living. Any comparison that leaves those out is economically incomplete,” he said.
Ibe said accountability should begin with publishing figures that reflect the lived economy.
“Instead of celebrating favourable international price comparisons, government officials should publish the figures that actually reflect the lived economy: petrol as a share of wages, real household income, food inflation, transport costs, unemployment, poverty levels and purchasing power.
“Nigerians deserve economic arguments grounded in what families can actually afford, not comparisons that look reassuring only when wages and living costs are left out.
“If the government wants to defend its economic record, it should do so on the full cost-of-living numbers. Those are the numbers that matter to ordinary Nigerians,” he said.
