Our reporter/ The former governor of Kaduna state and chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Nasir el-Rufai, on Monday said the federal government is spending more on petrol subsidy now than before.
President Bola Tinubu, in his inauguration speech on May 29, 2023, announced the removal of petrol subsidy.
But in a chat with reporters after delivering the lead paper at a capacity-building workshop, in Maiduguri, the Bornu state capital, el-Rufai said the government has started paying petrol subsidy.
“The federal government is now subsidizing fuel; many people don’t know this,” el-Rufai said.
“It is a right policy. I have always supported the withdrawal of oil subsidy; but in the course of implementing the policy, the government realised that subsidy has to be back; right now, government is spending a lot of money for subsidy, even more than before.
“You start implementing a policy because you are absolutely sure it is the right policy, but in the course of implementation, you come across bottlenecks, and you modify.
“The keyword in leadership, in my view, is pragmatism. You should be pragmatic. So when you make a policy, you start implementing it, and it doesn’t seem to work well. You should have the humility to stand back and say this is not working, and you modify it.”
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