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Nigerians Are To Blame For Fuel Subsidy Removal, Not Tinubu – APC
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has said Nigerians should hold themselves accountable for the removal of the fuel subsidy by President Bola Tinubu.
According to APC National Publicity Secretary Felix Morka, the president was simply implementing the provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), which was passed by the National Assembly and abolished the subsidy.
Morka pointed out that Nigerians did not voice opposition to their representatives when the PIA was being passed into law.
Speaking on Arise TV on Wednesday, he emphasized that President Tinubu was acting in accordance with the law.
“What has happened is not a function of politics or a proclamation by the president. It is a function of law the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) eliminated the system of subsidy as we knew it under the former administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
“Now as of the signing into law of the PIB, petroleum subsidy was gone. Meaning that Nigeria, this new government succeeded President Buhari could not pay subsidies because the law didn’t permit it.
“So what President Bola Tinubu did on the day of his inauguration was simply communicate what the law had declared.
“And I think this point is critical to make that we should be mindful that what the President did on the first day of his inauguration was to declare the state of the law.”
Morka explained that the fuel subsidy was unsustainable, pointing out that Nigerians had become reliant on it despite it being uncommon internationally.
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EKO HOT BLOG reports that he added that the real issue was that citizens failed to pressure their National Assembly representatives to oppose the subsidy removal.
The APC spokesman further noted that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) didn’t fully eliminate the subsidy in order to prevent a total collapse of the economy.
“He didn’t do anything of his own free will. It had been legislated by the National Assembly and signed into law by the previous president. Anyone who read the national budget. including some of the supplementaries there’s no provision for subsidies at all.
Fuel Subsidy Removal APC
“NNPC, being now a quasi public-private entity continued in some way shape or form to some degree to manage that recognizing that a wholesale complete total removal of subsidy would in fact further exacerbate existing economic conditions for the time being.
“The point I’m making is that that subsidy regime had become completely unsustainable. You cannot have a country where all of the earnings, the gross earnings of a country, was expended subsidizing one single product for the people.
“I understand that historically we’ve created the dependency on subsidy, so our people are used to buying fuel at almost nothing compared to what others are buying elsewher.
“However, now that it’s become obvious that we cannot sustain that system. That system had to go and it was removed by law.
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“Nigerians have representatives in that National Assembly. They could have told their representatives object to the removal of subsidy when that discussion was taking place. There were public hearings done,” Morka explained further.
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