Peter Obi Insists On Fuel Subsidy Removal, Claims Proper Management Of Funds Is Necessary
Peter Obi Insists On Fuel Subsidy Removal, Claims Proper Management Of Funds Is Necessary
The former Anambra State governor said the focus should be on ensuring that the funds saved or generated through subsidy removal are transparently managed and invested in sectors that directly benefit Nigerians.
The presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Obi, has reinstated his support for the removal of the fuel subsidy, saying the alleged mismanagement of proceeds should not be used as justification for returning to the subsidy regime.
Obi made the call on Monday during a panel session at the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Annual General Conference in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, where he argued that the removal of subsidy was necessary but should have been accompanied by a clear and organised plan for deploying the resources recovered from the policy.
The former Anambra State governor said the focus should be on ensuring that the funds saved or generated through subsidy removal are transparently managed and invested in sectors that directly benefit Nigerians.
“Well, I subscribe, and I maintain that you need to remove subsidy. Mismanagement of the proceeds should not be the reason for not removing it,” he said at the event in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Obi said the government should have provided Nigerians with alternative benefits from the resources released by the removal of the subsidy, particularly at a time when citizens were facing the consequences of higher fuel prices and rising living costs.
“What we should have done is that when we remove subsidy, we would have given the people an alternative usage for the subsidy. What we have today is that that removal and attendant resources being recovered are also being mismanaged and stolen.”
He argued that the resources should have been deliberately channelled into critical sectors such as healthcare, education, infrastructure and other areas capable of improving living conditions and strengthening the economy.
According to Obi, the Federal Government had claimed that about N16trillion had been received from the subsidy removal process, raising questions about the utilisation of such a substantial amount of public resources.
“For example, we have received, according to them [the Federal Government], N16trillion. I said it before; go to my manifesto and see where I said I would remove subsidy.”
“We’ll do it in an organised manner, and whatever we recover will be invested appropriately, and I’ll just give you an example because we have no time.”
Obi said the problem was therefore not the decision to remove the subsidy but the manner in which the resulting resources were being managed.
“So it’s what you use the money for that is the problem,” the former Anambra State governor told the gathering in the coastal state.
He further argued that the government could have saved the resources if it lacked immediate projects capable of absorbing them efficiently, using the country’s sovereign wealth fund as an example.
“We will use the money in an organised manner, or you save it. If they had saved the money and decided to do like any other country, we would have had $10billion added to the sovereign wealth fund, which, if you add it today, will be getting about $10billion every month, which we can use for a purpose.”
The former governor’s comments come amid sustained public debate over the economic impact of fuel subsidy removal and the management of resources accruing from the policy.
