GOVERNOR Nasir El- Rufa’i of Kaduna State has lamented that the huge amount of money being spent by the Federal Government to subsidise electricity, petrol and foreign exchange is no longer sustainable if the country must be able to tackle most of its socio-economic problems.
Speaking at the 12th Kaduna State Council on Health meeting, El-Rufai disclosed that the Federal Government spent N6 trillion on fuel subsidy for six months, N4 trillion to subsidise the naira and N300 billion to subsidise electricity in 2023.
The governor, while noting that the the N6 trillion on fuel subsidy is a quarter of the entire annual budget, also said that the amount is more than the entire budget of states and local governments on health this year.
El-Rufai said the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has not remitted anything to the federation account since the last quarter of 2021 which had forced the federal and state governments to depend mainly on import duties and taxes as revenue allocation shared by the three tiers of government.
He urged the citizens to decide to either support the removal of subsidy to enable the growth of other sectors of the economy or to allow it to continue at the benefit of a few individuals.
News Point Nigeria repots that, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Hajiya Zainab Ahmed, says the Federal Government will do away with petroleum subsidy by June 2023.
Ahmed said that during a press conference to mark the end of the 28th National Economic Summit,In November last year.
This newspaper reported that fuel subsidy gulped N2.565tn between January and August 2022.
Also, in the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, the Federal Government proposed to spend N3.3tn on fuel subsidy between January and June 2023.
According to Ahmed, removal of fuel subsidy is part of the FG’s medium-term plan in the budget.
She, however, said that the challenge was how to go about removing the subsidy.
