By Gbenga Akingbule.
Fomer Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, on Monday, said the Federal Government has since resumed the payment of fuel subsidy and it is currently expending a whopping sum of N8 trillion as subsidy.
Gatekeepers News reports that El-Rufai did not however specify whether or not the N8 trillion was a monthly or an accumulated sum of money since President Bola Tinubu took over as Nigeria’s President.
This was made known at Musa Usman Secretariat in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State venue of capacity building workshop on enhancing skills of government officials in policy implementation and productive human resource management.
El-Rufai who was the lead speaker at the event faulted the Federal government implementation of fuel subsidy but commended the government for revesing the policy by resuming payment of fuel subsidy.
“Asiwaju ( President Bola Tinubu) announce withdrawal of fuel subsidy on 29th May , but believe it or not , fuel subsidy is back , we’re spending more now, about N8 Trillion on subsidy than before 29th of May.
” I have always supported the withdrawal of fuel subsidy, but in the cause of implementation, as you can see , the government has realised that fuel subsidy has to be back . Right now, we’re paying alot of money on fuel subsidy even more than before.
“Because the impact has been seen and packages of support that will reduce the impact have not been so effective in reducing the impact so the federal government is back now subsidising petrol, many people dont know this, ” El-Rufai said.
El- Rufai revealed that if Nigerians “want to know whether the government is subsidising petrol or not, they should compare the price of petrol and diesel because petro should be more expensive than diesel but diesel is priced above a thousand Naira while petrol is still at N600.”
The former Kaduna State governor however stated the no policy is cast in stone and that present administration has done the right thing by making the necessary adjustment on fuel subsidy.
