Adedayo Akinwale and Ifeanyi Ohagwa in Abuja
The spokesperson of the Presidential Campaign Council of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Festus Keyamo has said the conversation on the removal of fuel subsidy would begin next year.
Keyamo, who is also the Minister of State for Labour, said the ruling party could no longer hide the facts from Nigerians, insisting that petroleum subsidy was no longer sustainable.
Keyamo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), disclosed this yesterday, during the unveiling of The Progressives Forum in Abuja, where he said the APC-led federal government has performed excellently well despite the challenges.
He explained: “As a progressive party, we believe there must be intervention in the lives of the very poor and the middle class. That is why we have the conditional cash transfers for the poor. That is the philosophy of President Muhammadu Buhari, that is the philosophy of APC. We care a lot for the poor.
“If it were to be other government existing today as I speak with you, there would be no subsidy now. But President Muhammadu Buhari said before we remove it, we need to put some measures in place to cushion the effect on the poor; because there is no longer any justification to retain subsidy as I speak with you today.
“We are in government, we cannot hide it again from the masses, from the people. We must all keep saying that subsidy has eaten deep into our country, into our economy.
“The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) is no longer remitting money to Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC). So all the money they earn goes to subsidy. So, government has to rely on revenue from Customs, from Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), from others to pay salaries and other things.”
Keyamo pointed out that in the United States and the United Kingdom, prices of petroleum have gone up more than four or five times.
He added: “But it is still the sympathy that the president has for the poor, because he feels that we have to put measures in place to cushion the effects on the poor before they remove subsidy. And that is why they’ve pushed it to next year. The conversation on how to remove subsidy will begin.”
Keyamo emphasised that the presidential candidate of the party, Mr. Bola Tinubu cannot be compared to the candidates of the opposition parties who he described as political prostitute.
He said while other presidential candidates have had the cause to defect from one party to the others, Tinubu stood firm, kept his integrity and ensured that Nigeria did not turn into a one-party state.
According to him, the ruling party would be ready for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) when the campaign starts.
“We are going to win this war through statistics. We are going to drag them to the facts and figures,” he said.
