The Presidency has disclosed that it can not intervene in the raging price controversy between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and Dangote Refinery, saying both companies are private entities.

Answering questions from journalists after addressing a press conference at the Presidential Villa on Wednesday, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Digital and New Media, O’tega Ogra, said the petroleum sector had been fully deregulated by government and the operators including the NNPCL and Dangote are operating as private businesses.

He said even though government has a hand in NNPCL, Petroleum Industry Act, ensures that the NNPC is operating on its own and that is why the government cannot intervene in the price controversy.

Ogra however declared that the people stand to benefit from what is happening at the end of the day, saying “it’s the consumer who benefits if a price war starts.”

He said, “As far as this government is concerned, the PMS regime has been deregulated, Dangote is a private company. We should not forget NNPCL is a limited liability company. Whatever controversy both of them are having has nothing to do with the government.

“If you go by the terms of Petroleum Industry Act, NNPC is on its own, even though it’s owned by the federal government, the state governments and local councils, but it’s operating as a limited liability company.

“You can see what the private marketers said that ‘if they find the NNPCL or Dangote’s prices are too much for them, they will resort to importing fuel because it’s a deregulated market,’ At the end of the day, it’s the consumer who benefits if a price war starts.

“If NNPCL fuel is too much (expensive), the private marketers can go to the market and bring in their own fuel and sell at the price that they think is very reasonable and profitable for them.

“So my answer is that, as far as government is concerned, government is not dabbling into this controversy. Dangote is a private company, it’s working on its own. NNPCL is a limited liability company and it has the right to fix the price of its own fuel.

“As a counterpart to that, government has a programme, which somebody mentioned earlier about CNG. The government wants to make sure that Nigerians have a choice. If you don’t want to use PMS, you can use CNG and you can see what’s going on in some of our cities; Lagos, Ibadan, Benin and some other places where transporters are already embracing CNG,” he said.