The Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has vowed to remove fuel subsidy if elected Nigeria’s President during the 2023 general election.
Obi stated this in an interview in Arise TV interview on Wednesday, stating that the money spent on fuel subsidy would be channelled to other sectors of the economy.
The presidential candidate described the Nigeria’s implementation of fuel subsidy as shambolic and a scam, emphasizing his resolve to remove subsidies and improve critical economic sectors like power, healthcare and education.
He reasoned that to remove fuel subsidy, Nigerians need to trust their government into passing the cost into areas that affect human development, especially health, education and power.
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Obi said, “In the last 10 years, the subsidy has got over $40 billion. It’s a sinking pipe. That is; we spent over $40 billion on subsidy.
“Total education expenditure in the past 12 years is about N8 trillion. So, in 10 years about N8 trillion was spent.”
“The most critical areas of development are health and education, with an expenditure of less than fuel subsidy.”
“If we spent the next $20 billion in power, we would have been generating at least 20,000 MW.
“Subsidy spending alone would have solved a lot of our issues in education, in health, and in power, if we had 20kMW in electricity we will be growing 4 perc cent and added $100 billion in GDP.
“Everything has to be…I will remove it and offer useful resources, you must be able to offer something in replacement of what you are trying to do.
The former Anambra State Governor said that Nigeria cannot continue to spend $40 billion on subsidy without a commensurate delivery in value.
“Meanwhile, your critical sectors receive less than 50 per cent of the sum. Is subsidy more important than health & education?” he said.
In April 2022, an upward review of the budget amount for petrol subsidy for 2022 by N442.72billion, from N3.557 trillion to N4 trillion was effected following the approval of a revised 2022 budget by the Nigerian Senate.
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