FG now paying more subsidy -El-Rufai

•Urges Tinubu to drop appointees who fail to deliver

BY GODWIN OBI

Former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, has said the Federal Government has continued to pay for fuel subsidy.

Speaking in Maiduguri Borno State, yesterday, El-Rufai said the government is now paying more subsidy than it was paying before, explaining that the support that would have cushioned the effect of the removal of subsidy was not effective, which he said has led to the reversal of the policy.

In his inaugural speech on May 29, President Bola Tinubu announced that the government would no longer pay for subsidies, and shortly afterwards, the cost of fuel was increased.

But El-Rufai, who said he supports the removal of subsidy, said the government had to make necessary adjustments.

“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 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 subsidizing petrol. Many people don’t know that fuel subsidy is back, 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 litre.

“So, we are still subsidising petrol because the government has realised that the way it implemented the fuel subsidy initially required some adjustments. That’s what I keep saying about policy and policy pragmatism,” he said.

He advised President Tinubu to drop any of his appointees who failed to deliver on his mandate.

He also urged the president to also explore the possibility of amending some of his policies that were not yielding the desired results.

“You appointed a person into a position and he is not working according to the expectation, you should have the humility to tell him that I need a better person, go and do something else,” he said.

El-Rufai called for prayers and support from the citizens for the administration in its quest to turn around things.

“What we must to do as citizens is to pray for our leaders for God to guide them to see or do what is right.

“For God to give them the humility to reverse themselves when necessary and do the right thing; that’s how society progresses,” he said