Olabode Sowunmi – NGOs Not Doing Enough Concerning The Fuel Subsidy
A Special Legislative Aide on Gas and Power to the Senate President, Olabode Sowunmi, has accused Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) of not doing enough to intervene in the lingering fuel crisis, adding that NGOs ought to come in when there are lapses in governance.
He said this On Thursday on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme, while also refusing to blame the regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), for the scarcity, which has subjected Nigerians to weeks of excruciating discomfort.
He said fuel scarcity was not completely new, adding that it was rampant in the military era.
The energy expert added that if the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation claims to have billions of litres of petrol, it is the duty of the people and NGOs to also investigate such claims.
He added,
“What I am trying to say in simple terms is that NGOs exist to support the function of governance and that is why they are exempted from taxation all over the world. The things that NGOs do are ordinarily what the government should be doing.
“Now, what I am saying is that the NGOs that you have across this industry, or NGOs that offer whatever services in this industry, need to also up their game. The point I am also making is that when there are imperfections in the service delivery or in the information that is passed across, there must be an independent way to verify this information to the extent that we will be able to know what is happening.”
Sowunmi said that whether the government had failed or not was not really the issue at hand.
He, however, said it was the job of NGOs to provide information on the quantity of the fuel.
When asked if the government had failed in its duties having been unable to provide fuel for a month, he said,
“I cannot speak for the government in that aspect because I am not the spokesperson for the government, but there has been scarcity, and the government as of today appears not to be able to solve it.”
