Former Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, has posited that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is still running the fuel subsidy regime.
According to him, a lot of Nigerians don’t know that the Federal Government is currently paying more for fuel subsidies than before it was removed by Tinubu in 2023.
El-Rufai made the submission on Monday while fielding questions from newsmen in Maiduguri, Borno State, after delivering a lead paper during a capacity-building workshop for top officials of the State government.
He asserted that the restoration of fuel subsidy is what made the price of petrol per litre to be at about N600 to N750, which could have been much higher than the diesel, which is now sold above N1,000 depending on the location.
His words: “A good leader must be decisive and have the ability to make good decisions, trustworthy, empower others irrespective of political, religious or ethnic considerations, have clear communication skills and resilient in all ramifications.
“Though, it is too early to judge the present administration, is just been there for only nine (9) months, and you know leadership is work in progress, you start something as I said in my speech, you start a policy because you are absolutely sure is the right policy, but in the course of implementation, if you see bottlenecks, you modify, because the key word in leadership in my view is not ideology or anything, is pragmatism.
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“You should always be pragmatic. You are not God, only God is perfect, so as a good leader, when you make a policy and you started implementing, and it doesn’t seem to work well, you should have the humility to stand back and said, this is not working.
“For example, if you appoint a person to a position and he is not performing to expectation, you should have the humility to say look, I need a better person to do the job perfectly. Leadership is a continuous thing and in a term of four years, you can’t assess a government of nine months.
“But as I also said earlier during my presentation, the removal of fuel subsidy by the present administration is another good policy by President Tinubu. I have always supported withdrawal of fuel subsidy. But as you can see, in the course of implementation, the government has now realized that the subsidy has to be back, because right now, we are paying a lot of money amounting to trillions of naira for subsidy even more than before, because the impact has been seen and the packages of support that will reduce the impact have not been effective in reducing the impact, and so, the federal government has to backpedal by subsidizing petrol.
“Many people don’t know this. If they want to know whether there is fuel subsidy or not, they should compare the prices of petrol and diesel per litre. This is because, under normal circumstances, petrol suppose to be more expensive than diesel. As it is, diesel is above N1000, while petrol stood at about N600 per litre. So we are still subsidizing for fuel in Nigeria.”
