Fuel subsidy is back, but many Nigerians don’t know — El-rufai

Nasir El-Rufa, former governor of Kaduna State, has said the federal government has smuggled back subsidy but many Nigerians are not aware of it.

He revealed that Tinubu’s administration is currently paying more for fuel subsidies than before it was abruptly removed in May 2023.

Mr El-Rufai made the shocking revelation while addressing newsmen after delivering the lead paper at a capacity-building workshop on Enhancing Skills of Government Officials in Policy Implementation and Productive Human Resource Management for political appointees in Maiduguri on Monday

He noted that the packages to mitigate the impact of fuel subsidy were not effective, which however, led to the reversal of the policy.

“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 liter.

“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,” he said.

Recall that President Bola Tinubu in his inaugural speech had announced the removal of fuel subsidy, saying its payment was no longer justifiable.