Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has admitted that the regime of President Muhammadu Buhari believes that doing away with fuel subsidy removal could trigger chaos and instability in the country.
“When you consider the chaos, the social disharmony and…instability such an action (of abolishing subsidies) would facilitate, is it worth it? I don’t think so,” Mr Mohammed disclosed in an interview with Reuters on Monday.
Earlier in January, the Buhari regime said it would enforce complete fuel subsidy removal in July, promising to provide Nigerians with N5,000 monthly transportation allowance to cushion the economic aftereffects.
However, with citizens threatening nationwide protest and the Nigerian Labour Congress vowing to shut down the country should fuel subsidies be removed, the regime chickened out, announcing the postponement of the policy.
In March, Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed, said the Buhari-led regime stood down the planned removal of fuel subsidy due to pushback from citizens and to avoid consequences in the 2023 general elections.
“We are cleaning up our subsidies. We had a setback, we were to remove fuel subsidy by July this year but there was a lot of push back from the polity.
“We have elections coming and also because of the hardship that companies and citizens went through during the COVID-19 pandemic, we just felt that the time was not right, so we pulled back on that,” Ms Ahmed said.