The Chief Executive Officer of CFG Advisory, Mr Tilewa Adebayo, has said the fuel subsidies removal has been heavily politicized amid Nigeria’s rising debt profile.
Adebayo disclosed this on Wednesday in an Arise Television interview monitored by Media Talk Africa.
He was reacting to the federal government’s claim to end fuel subsidies by May.
According to him, five years ago, he had proposed a gradual removal of fuel subsidies instead of the proposed approach being brandished by the government.
He stated that Nigeria’s rising debt burden would be reduced if the government gradually removed fuel subsidies.
Adebayo disclosed that although the federal government had improved its non-oil revenue generation capacity but should make more investments to expand.
“Unfortunately, we have politicized fuel subsidies. Five to six years ago, I proposed removing 10 or 15 per cent of subsidies yearly. If we had done that in the past eight years, the subsidy burden would have been over; suddenly, we want a big bang approach to ending the problem because subsidy gulps $10-15 billion annually”, he said.
The Debt Management Office, DMO, had said Nigeria’s debt profile would hit N77 trillion in June 2023 if the Central Bank of Nigeria’s N23.7 trillion Ways and Means Advance is securitized.
Zainab Ahmed, Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, has continued to lament the negative impact of fuel subsidies on Nigeria’s debt burden.
As a solution, Ahmed said President Muhammadu Buhari would announce the removal of fuel subsidies before handing over power in May.
