I’m a believer in fuel subsidy; removal – Senator Udende
By Haruna Salami
The Senator representing Benue North East, Emmanuel Udende has said he is a firm believer in the fuel subsidy removal by President Bola Tinubu describing the exercise as “a scam”.
Speaking with Daily Times on the topic, which has brought a lot of hardship on Nigerians, Udende said the people that benefit from fuel subsidy are not ordinary Nigerians, but people in the oil sector.
He said one can imagine that the expenditure is about N400 billion monthly, which if multiply that by 12 months is mind bugling adding that “now without the subsidy, I think consumption has been cut by 28 per cent”.
“We were subsidizing, not only Nigeria, but neighbouring countries, and that has stopped. I think it’s good for us”.
He advised the government, in the interim, to provide palliatives that will bring succour to the man on the street, adding that he won’t agree that the country goes back to subsidy regime.
In the alternative, Udende preferred the government subsidise agriculture “where every man on the street will get food to eat”. But subsidy for petroleum products, no.
“The few people that are benefiting, some of them present their bills, nobody to check. It is only NNPCL that buys, you don’t know how much they are buying.
According to him, the President has done well by removing the subsidy, urging everybody to support him because “no matter the hardship, it will be temporal. We believe the prices will come down once we allow market forces to play”.
On the view of some people that instead of palliatives, the government should use the money to build a refinery and solve this problem once and for all, Udende said the fact that the four government refineries are not working has rendered the argument useless.
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“My biggest problem is that we have four refineries, but they are not working” adding “the problem is not even building refinery. If we don’t want the ones we have, sell them to private individuals who can manage them”.
He said since we cannot fix existing ones there is no need building new ones. “I don’t subscribe to building new refineries”, he said.
