Sudden Return Of Fuel Subsidy Among Other Interesting Newspaper Headlines Today

The sudden return of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit P.M.S otherwise known as Petrol is giving the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC a serious headache. With the NNPC GMD, Maikanti Baru saying N24bn is used to subsidize fuel monthly with the demand of 50 million litres everyday, major Nigerian National newspapers caption the alarm with various inscriptions on their front-pages.

The PUNCH says Petrol Subsidy now N24bn Monthly, Daily Demand 50 million litres – NNPC; GUARDIAN says Oil Subsidy may return as cross-border losses hit N774m daily; Fuel Subsidy Gulps N774 million daily is the banner headline on The SUN while Daily INDEPENDENT writes We Spend N774m Daily To Subsidise Petrol – NNPC.

The Group Managing Director of the nation’s oil firm, Maikanti Baru is saddened that the multiplication of filling stations had energized unprecedented cross-border smuggling of petrol to neighbouring countries, making it difficult to sanitise the fuel supply and distribution matrix in Nigeria.

The ongoing confusion over the whereabouts of young girls abducted in Dapchi, Yobe state three weeks ago takes the centre stage on The NATION where the Military is tackling a member of the house of Reps, Hon Goni Bukar over his claim that the 110 girls are still in Yobe state. A top military anonymous source told newsmen over the weekend that Goni and other politicians talking about the issue are “bunch of confusionists.”

Nigerian Tribune leads with politics in; Tinubu Lost Bid to “restructure” APC with the paper understanding that the factors that led to the appointment of the National Leader as the mediator in the APC Crisis has failed with the tenure extension of the NWC led by Chief John Oyegun. It said if Tinubu’s plan to step Oyegun’s leadership aside in restructuring the party for the 2019 elections with him bringing Chief Bisi Akande on board had been successful, the decision of the last NEC to make Oyegun stay in office till after the presidential elections might not have hold water.

And lastly from VANGUARD comes the story of one of the midwives abducted by Boko Haram at an IDP Camp in Maiduguri last Thursday, Hauwa Mohammed sending a whatsapp message to her parents saying her life is in danger. The paper says In a video message composed in Hausa in the heat of the sporadic shooting by the insurgents at the military base they fled before the shooting, Hauwa, 25, asked her friend to tell her parents that she was being taken away by her abductors.