By METROWATCH
Immediate-past governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, says the present federal administration in Nigeria is spending more on fuel subsidy than the previous regime.
The former governor added however, that ‘a lot of Nigerians do not know about it.
Speaking to journalists in Maiduguri April 15, el-Rufai said that the federal government has increased its payments compared to previous sums.
“Fuel subsidy is another policy that has been implemented by the President (Bola Tinubu), 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 realised 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 subsidising petrol.”
He mentioned that a significant number of individuals are unaware that the fuel subsidy has been reinstated, “but, if they want to know whether we are subsidising 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 liter.
“So, we are still subsidising 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,”
