Taiwo Hassan 
A pump attendant fills a car with fuel at the OlA petrol station, following country wide price hikes on March 15, 2022, in Nairobi. – African countries are feeling the pain of Ukraine’s crisis as supply disruptions hike inflation and oil prices push up fuel costs. Global oil prices touched ten-year highs of more than $100 a barrel soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, doubling diesel prices for African countries like Nigeria. Ukraine and Russia are both major suppliers of wheat and grains to Africa and Western sanctions and disruptions are already hiking costs across the continent. (Photo by Simon MAINA / AFP) (Photo by SIMON MAINA/AFP via Getty Images)
Following President Bola Tinubu’s plans to introduce market price control amid skyrocketing prices of items in the country, a renowned industrialist and Chairman/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Rimax Group of Companies, Chief Livinux Chukwudi Okwara, has urged government to introduce an annual price regulation for manufacturers. The industrialist believes this is the only way the current government can checkmate the inflation and get Nigeria back to her old days of institutionalised price control board. According to him, the worrying situation in the country is pitiable, as it is showing that the country is lacking real governance because everyone is just freely increasing their products on a daily basis, which is not supposed to be so.
Chief Okwara explained that it was wrong and against market ethics for manufacturers to freely introduce arbitrary prices without checks and balances, saying price control would stipulate that manufacturers are only allowed to increase price of products once in a year. The Rimax Group Chairman said: “There are certain unfortunate situations that have taken place in Nigeria today. There is no price stability, no control, nobody is in charge.
The economic crisis is very erratic on Nigerians because of lack of control. “Establishing a price control mechanism that people can only increase price of products only once in a year would hold everything in check. All prices of products must be exhibited so that people cannot go at night and agree on prices and come and start embarrassing people. “A lot of these price hikes are organised by groups and next morning they just surprise people with their new price and start campaigning to see the price reflected at the national level and this has been causing a lot of instability in the country.”
He added: “So once there is established price control in the country and punishable offences introduced you will see that everyone will exercise patience and will make the fragile economy to see light.” While speaking on opening of Nigeria’s borders, Chief Okwara noted: “I think if we continue to close the border we are causing disaffection to our country because there has been scarcity of food items. “But when they allow food to come in, it would compelled them to bring out the ones they have been hiding and the prices will stabilise at a price people can afford.
That’s very very important. “I think government should rapidly sponsor production of food. There is a lot of talks of emergency declaration in agriculture, when you have emergency you bring out raw materials for plantation. “You sponsor plantation here and there to ensure that every land is planted with crops. You will find out that people will even be planting for their own consumption. “Ministries involved in boosting food security are not taking things seriously. We don’t even know if they have meetings in line of emergency supply of food or any meeting in the line of trying to produce food because there is no news about that. “By now, we should have had even the second output of food produced through the emergency measures but we are not getting that. So there are a lot of questions to be answered.”
