Kaduna State’s former Governor Nasir El-Rufai has said that despite pronouncing the termination of fuel subsidy, the regime of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had been subsidising the cost of the product without Nigerians knowing it.
El-Rufai, who made the submission in Maiduguri, Borno State’s capital, on Monday, said subsidy payment by the Federal Government currently was even higher than ever before.
A high-ranking chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), El-Rufai spoke to journalists after delivering a paper titled: “Leadership and Public Policy: Navigating Challenges and Lessons,” at a workshop for Borno State senior government officials.
His ministerial nomination by Tinubu had been rejected by the Senate over adverse security reports on the former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
According to him, the packages of support supposed to reduce the impact of fuel subsidy removal were not effective, hence the reversal of the policy.
At his swearing in on May 29, Tinubu announced “fuel subsidy is gone.”
El-Rufai said: “Fuel subsidy is another policy that has been implemented by the President, it’s the right policy. I always supported withdrawing fuel subsidy.
“But, in the course of implementation as you can see the government has now realized that the subsidy has to be back because right now, we are paying a lot of money for subsidy even more than before.
“This is because the impact has been seen and the packages of support that would reduce the impact have not been so effective in reducing the impact, so the federal government is back now subsidizing Petrol.”
He said many people don’t know that fuel subsidy is back.
“But, if they want to know whether we are subsidizing or not, they should compare the price of petrol and diesel because petrol should be more expensive than diesel but diesel is priced above a thousand naira while petrol is at N600 per litre.
“So, we are still subsidizing Petrol because the government has realised that they way it implemented the fuel subsidy initially required some adjustments. That’s what I keep saying about policy and policy pragmatism.”
