Fuel subsidy: Buhari owes Nigerians immediate apology, restitution

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to tender unreserved apology to the entire nation for allowing his administration to deceive Nigerians while secretly running an over-bloated and sleazy oil subsidy regime as now exposed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.

The PDP said its demand is predicated on the confession by the NNPC Group Managing Director, Mele Kyari, that the Federal Government  have finally ended the discredited fuel subsidy regime in the nation’s public finance system.

In 2019, it is estimated that over N780 billion was spent on fuel subsidy while in the current fiscal year, N450 billion was provided for in the budget as fuel subsidy expenditure.

Kyari, confirmed that subsidy on petrol had been permanently removed by the government. Kyari, who spoke during an AIT programme – Moneyline – quipped, “there is no subsidy…It is zero forever’’

In a statement released on the PDP’s Twitter handle on Friday, the party holds that “Kyari’s open confession is a direct vindication of our stand that the @OfficialAPCNg-led administration has been neck deep in serial oil fraud.”

The party notes as appalling that while President Buhari castigated previous PDP administrations and announced that oil subsidy existed only as a fraud, he had secretly continued to preside over an over-bloated subsidy regime through which over N14 trillion belonging to Nigerians have been stolen.

The statement quoted Kyari’s words, “there are many things wrong with the under-recovery … the under-recovery itself is so over-bloated because we are subsidizing the whole of West Africa. That has to stop.”

Based on that, PDP argued that, “It is clear to all that the @MBuhari administration had not only been covering sleazy oil subsidy regime but also an under-recovery fraud with an international dimension.

“It is even more distressing that that such monumental racket against our nation had been going on under an administration whose leaders parade as saints while swimming in an ocean of corruption.

“Our party charges the @MBuhari Presidency to immediately name the West African countries that it claims to be subsidizing fuel for and the amount so far spent in such hazy enterprise. (Daily Trust)