Soludo clamours for removal of subsidy of fuel

Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, Governor of Anambra State, has disapproved of retaining fuel subsidy in Nigeria as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Limited said payments for petrol subsidy cost the Federation Account N1.217 trillion in the first five months of 2022.

However, Soludo, noted that fuel subsidy should be charged from the federal government and not subnational states and ought to have been eradicated  ‘like yesterday’.

Soludo, who made his intentions known at the launch of the Nigeria Development Update, NDU, by the World Bank group in Abuja yesterday, emphasised that the solutions to Nigeria’s problems were obvious and not far-fetched.

Specifically, he said: “Federal government decides that it wants to subsidise Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, why do you have to charge it from the subnational states? You should charge it from the revenue of the federal government.

“We need to have this conversation, the politics, and structure of the government and so on. We cannot do the same thing over and over again and expect the same result; it’s not going to happen. We’ve had this analysis for a decade, the same analysis and conclusions of what to do.

“Remove this subsidy like yesterday, this ought to have been removed like yesterday. If we continue with the subsidy, Central Bank will continue to spill money. The solutions are pretty obvious. What we need to do is to be committed to it.”