The national chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), John Odigie-Oyegun, said the eventual removal of fuel subsidy is inevitable as it’s necessary in view of emerging and current realities.
During a meeting with a delegation of the APC National Coalition for Peace and Mobilization on Tuesday, Odigie-Oyegun said the gradual removal of subsidy is necessary as the current administration inherited an “infected system of subsidy run by corrupt cartels”.
“In one way or the other, subsidy must go,” the APC national chairman said at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja.
Odigie-Oyegun claimed the government spends almost a trillion naira yearly on the corruption-tainted subsidy regime, adding that it is unacceptable and can no longer be sustained.
He also said oil cartels and their cronies resist the change using blackmail and sabotaging government on the issue of subsidy. It all has led to the lingering nationwide fuel scarcities despite serious government efforts.
He described the current fuel scarcity as a “national disgrace” and said the country’s oil and gas sector should be restructured as it has been marred by corruption and inefficiencies.
The chairman added that President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive to the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPRA) may not result in increase in the pump price of petrol, but would result in constant availability of fuel with a more efficient and realistic pricing system.
Earlier, the group’s national president, Ahmed Saleh, said the fuel scarcities “impacted negatively on the integrity of the party and this noble administration of positive change”.
He also called on the “total overhauling” of heads of federal government commissions, parastatals and agencies.
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