President Bola Tinubu has provided an explanation of his decision to stop the nation’s gasoline subsidy program.
The fuel subsidy has to go, according to Tinubu, since the nation could not continue to support it.
The trillions of naira annually spent to maintain the subsidies, he continued, were intended to improve, among other things, national security, housing, education, and the healthcare and transportation sectors.
In a speech heard by the entire country on Monday, Tinubu said that the funds were being transferred to a small number of people with large bank accounts and deep pockets.
“This group had amassed so much wealth and power that they became a serious threat to the fairness of our economy and the integrity of our democratic governance.
“To be blunt, Nigeria could never become the society it was intended to be as long as such small, powerful yet unelected groups hold enormous influence over our political economy and the institutions that govern it.
“The whims of the few should never hold dominant sway over the hopes and aspirations of the many. If we are to be a democracy, the people and not the power of money must be sovereign.
He maintained that Former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration saw the looming danger as well and it made no provision in the 2023 Appropriations for subsidy after June this year.
“Removal of this once helpful device that had transformed into a millstone around the country’s neck had become inevitable,” he said.
