The Coalition of Northern Group and Oodua Self-Determination Groups on Tuesday, throw their weight on the fuel subsidy removal as announced by President Bola Tinubu on May 29.

The CNG, a coalition of 150 Civil Society Organisations in the North, also knocked the former President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), for allegedly pursuing unpopular deregulation programmes.

The coalition maintained that the $15.6 billion spent annually on subsidies could build a railway from Lagos to Kano, Port-Harcourt to Maiduguri, and Lagos to Calabar combined.

Spokesman of the CNG, Abdul-Azeez Sulieman while reading from a Communique after a One-Day Town Hall Meeting in Kaduna, insisted that the N2.91 trillion spent by the Federal Government on petrol subsidy between January and September 2022, was largely responsible for the country’s dwindling public finances.

According to the communique, available data has exposed the unforgivable level of disabling corruption perpetrated with the subsidy regime in favour of a few individuals at the expense of public projects that cost less than Nigeria’s $15.6bn annual subsidy.

It added that the amount spent annually on subsidy was far more than what is required to build a railway from Lagos to Kano, Port-Harcourt to Maiduguri, and Wembley-like stadiums in each of Nigeria’s six geo-political zones.

The Communique partly read, “Successive governments in Nigeria have tried and failed to remove or cut the subsidy, which has greatly constrained Nigeria’s development goals, as the subsidies mostly only benefit a few wealthy households.

“Concerned by the backlash from some quarters that followed the announcement of the withdrawal of the subsidies by the President, CNG convened a one-day stakeholder roundtable of all its 150 affiliates and other northern interest groups at the Arewa House, Kaduna today, June 6, 2023.

“At the end of the Townhall discussions, the following inevitable observations were drawn: Generally, the subsidy is an evil that previous governments groomed and fed fat on all these years to the detriment of the masses.”

The group also alleged that subsidy payments were used to steal public funds.

It said, “The oil subsidy has been a conduit pipe for siphoning public funds for the benefit of a very few members of a powerful cartel at the expense of the entire nation.

“That since assumption of office, the former President Muhammadu Buhari had made several promises of rehabilitating the nation’s refineries, all of which he failed to fulfill. Instead, he pursued unpopular deregulation programmes while maintaining the fraudulent subsidy regime and further plunging the nation into deeper crisis and mass suffering.

“That on emergence as Nigeria’s new President, Bola Tinubu disclosed that the current budget handed over to him by former President Buhari did not provide for the petrol subsidy and therefore it is gone, which did not go down well with the exploiter class that benefits from the subsidy budgets.

“Since Tinubu announced the removal of the fuel subsidy, the cartel that has been reaping its benefits at the expense of the suffering masses, has waged a campaign about the fictitious knock-on effects that it will have on the daily lives of Nigerians.”

 

Oodua Groups Applead to NLC, TUC

Oodua Self-Determination Groups, yesterday, appealed to the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, to make room for positive dialogue, saying President Bola Tinubu meant well for Nigerians.

The groups explained that the Federal Government cannot continue to subsidize Premium Motor Spirits, PMS, also known as fuel, adding that the money budgeted for petrol can be used for solving infrastructure, healthcare, education and housing deficits among others.

Addressing newsmen in Lagos, the groups’ Spokesman, Mr. Razaq Olokoba of the Oodua Youth Movement, OYM, urged that all planned civil disobedience should be shelved because President Tinubu had  kick-started moves that would enable the country’s refineries to commence work.

He said: “As far back as during the campaigns, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu made no pretence that he would muster the political courage and will to take tough and hard decisions. One of such hard decisions concerns the issue of fuel subsidy. For this year, 2023, Nigeria budgeted N1 trillion of its oil revenue for subsidizing petrol alone. This cannot continue. This is good money going down the drain with little or nothing to show for it.”

 

Olokoba, who said fuel subsidy funding has increased the nation’s debt profile, added that the inability to deregulate the oil sector had discouraged investments due to the artificial low price structure caused by subsidy.

He said: “The Nigerian National Petroleum Company limited, NNPCL’s, monopoly is one factor leading to high cost of petrol. In reality, Nigerians are paying for the greed of a cabal on the altar of corruption. Subsidy must go.

Another reality is that if we don’t kill subsidy, subsidy will kill us. Has anyone wondered why since the year 2000, when the Nigerian government gave about 20 refining licences to private companies, not one refinery has been built apart from Dangote? Investors and licence holders found they could not recover their investments due to the artificial low price structure caused by fuel subsidies. Total deregulation of the oil sector is the way to go.”

The groups, therefore, called on the Nigerian masses to be less amenable to the damaging propaganda campaigns by the ‘merciless cartels’ that have been impoverishing the nation while pocketing the subsidy proceeds for their benefits and those of their immediate families.