Follow Us on Google
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Olatunbosun Oyintiloye, has appealed to President Bola Tunubu to immediately intervene in the high cost of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), popularly called cooking gas in the country.
While noting that the cost of cooking gas was becoming unbearable for the masses, Oyintiloye said although the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ekperikpe Ekpo, on February 22, announced that the Federal Government had asked the LPG producers to stop exporting the commodity, the decision has not yielded any positive results in the reduction of price of the item locally.
He said rising prices of the item might be as a result of the LPG producers’ secret exportation of the products.
Oyintiloye, a former member of the defunct APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), said it was alarming that the cost of refiling a 12.5kg of cylinder in many parts of the country now ranges between N17,500 and N18,000.
He said that as a result of these exorbitant prices, many LPG users, who could not afford the price, were gradually shifting to solid fuel, like charcoal and firewood.
Oyintiloye said the shift to the use of charcoal and firewood by the masses could aggravate the climate change challenges, and its adverse effects such as deforestation, desertification and soil degradation that could lead to erosion.
According to him, the use of solid fuel could also lead to air pollution with carbon monoxide emitted from solid fuel, which is harmful to human beings because it is bound to the haemoglobin in the blood, reducing the ability of blood to carry oxygen to the body’s organs.
“This will, in turn, pose serious danger to the respiratory organ, fatigue, headaches, confusion, and dizziness to the human system due to inadequate oxygen delivery to the brain, thereby reducing the overall well-being of people.
“Human beings depend on green plants for daily supply of oxygen, while giving back carbon dioxide to the plants.
“In an attempt to substitute clean cooking gas for firewoods and charcoal by cutting down green trees, this will affect human survival,” he said.
