The Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai has urged the Federal Government to remove fuel subsidy with immediate effect.
The governor called for the immediate removal of petrol subsidy, Vanguard Newspaper reports.
He made the call, yesterday, at the “State-of-the-State” session at the on-going NESG, in Abuja. When the governor who was on panel during session was asked what should be the priority of the government, he said, “remove fuel subsidy immediately.”
Going further, he disclosed that governors of the 36 states and federal government officials, at the National Economic Council, had agreed to the removal of petrol subsidy in September 2021. He expressed surprise that President Muhammadu Buhari failed to implement the decision.
He said, “I think if NEC decisions were faithfully implemented by the national government, some of the current economic issues will not arise – because NGF provided technical support to study this subsidy issue when it started looming and at N800 billion.”
” We projected that if left unchecked, it would lead to trillions of leakage. As pointed out earlier, we are not even sure if these figures are real or just manufactured on paper to take out money. ‘We envisaged at that point that a time would come when the NNPC would come to FAAC and say guys, we need cheque from you to cover for subsidy- not to contribute but to say we are spending more than we are receiving from crude oil. That time has come.
“We took a decision to remove subsidy in September 2021. The Minister of Finance also agreed. We agreed that the money from there should be channelled into health, education and infrastructure.
“Even this ASUU problem, we agreed to provide funding for ASUU. The NEC took that decision but the national government failed to implement that decision. Till today, we do not know why this decision taken in 2021 has not been implemented.”