President Muhammadu Buhari, Monday in Abuja said that his government
may not remove subsidy on petroleum subsidy, stressing that arguments in
favour of the removal were not reasonable enough. More so, the
removal will have adverse effect on the poor and jobless Nigerians.
Buhari said this after receiving a briefing from the Ministry of
Petroleum Resources, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)
and other agencies in the oil sector on a review of existing agreements
for the swapping of crude oil for refined products with a view to
injecting more honesty and transparency into the process to reduce
costs. He promised to carefully review all the submissions he had
received on the need to remove the subsidies.
“I have received many literature on the need to remove subsidies, but much of it has no depth.
“When you touch the price of petroleum products, that has the effect
of triggering price rises on transportation, food and rents. That is
for those who earn salaries, but there are many who are jobless and will
be affected by it,” he said.
According to Buhari, what impeded transparency in the oil sector may
not be the subsidy but lack of security, sabotage, vandalism, corruption
and mismanagement; issues he intends to deal with decisively.
“We have to go back to the good old days of transparency and accountability,” the President said
No comments:
Post a Comment