Why Buhari couldn’t remove fuel subsidy, even when he labelled it a fraud – Presidency
Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, has explained why his principal could not remove fuel subsidy
It will be recalled that removal of fuel subsidy was one of the needed economic reforms that President Muhammadu Buhari promised to effect during his campaign for the 2015 presidency
But seven years down the line, the president has not been able to remove the fuel subsidy, much to the surprise of my Nigerians
And while speaking in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday, Adesina, Buhari’s aide, said: “Each time there is an effort to fight the fraud in the subsidy regime, you have to contend with labour, you have to contend with the people. The government needed to weigh its options because of the social consequences in it.”
Adesina, who blamed his principal’s inability to remove subsidy on economic and social factors, said: “In the beginning, his (Buhari’s) position was: what was subsidy really? But over the years it became evident that the country was bleeding, the economy was bleeding, there was a lot of hemorrhage which needed to be stopped and the time came and that time is now.”
According to Adesina, the petrol subsidy had stayed longer than required.
He added that almost every Nigerian has now come to the realisation that it must come to a stop.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, during a public presentation and breakdown of the 2023 Appropriation Act in Abuja, on Wednesday, disclosed that payment of fuel subsidy will stop by the end of June 2023
Ahmed noted that in the 2023 fiscal period, the government made provisions of N3.36 trillion naira for fuel subsidy payment to cover the first six months of 2023.
According to the minister, this move was in line with the 18-month extension announced early 2022
