Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Hon. Olatunbosun Oyintiloye has appealed to President Bola Tunubu to urgently intervene in the high cost of Liquefied Petroleum gas, popularly called cooking gas in the country.

Oyintiloye, who made the appeal while speaking with newsmen recently, said that the cost of the cooking gas was becoming unbearable for the masses.

He said although the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ekperikpe Ekpo, on February 22, announced that the federal government had asked LPG producers to stop exporting the commodity, but the decision had 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 LPG producers secretly exporting the products.

Oyintiloye, a former member of the defunct APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), said that 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 the hike in prices, many LPG users who could not afford the price were gradually shifting to solid fuel like charcoal and firewood.

Oyintiloye said that the shift to the use of charcoal and firewood by the masses could aggravate 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 can also lead to air pollution with carbon monoxide emitted from solid fuel, which is harmful to human beings because it binds to hemoglobin in the blood, reducing the ability of blood to carry oxygen to the body’s organs.