FUEL SUBSIDY IS NOT WORKING – FG

The Federal Government on Monday said payment of subsidy on local consumption of petroleum products was not working because it was subject to abuses.

“The system (fuel subsidy) will not work because there is so much room for abuse. Whereever you go outside Lagos and Abuja, fuel is hardly sold for N97 per litre. Civil society organisations are not speaking against this. They only attack the government. Government cannot be at all filling stations,” Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, said in Abuja.

The declaration came barely hours after media reports of a suit in which a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party in Anambra State, Chief Stanley Okeke, is asking a Federal High Court to compel President Goodluck to totally withdraw subsidy on fuel.

Reacting to the Okeke suit, key figures in the civil society on Sunday, as reported by The PUNCH on Monday, described the court action as dubious and diversionary.

The government in January 2012 had a tough time repelling mass unrest coordinated by civil groups in protest against the wholesale removal of subsidy and the consequent jump in the per litre pump price of petrol from N65 to N141.

The government, following a two-week paralysis of the system, later retreated and fixed the price at N97 under a regime of partial subsidy removal.

But Maku, who spoke while briefing the media on the achievements of the Federal Government for 2012, said petrol could hardly be bought at the control price of N97 per litre outside Lagos and the Federal Capital Territory.

The minister said civil society organisations needed to rise up against exploitation by dealers in petroleum products, arguing that the government could not be at every filling station across the country. He said the people needed to ask questions on why they cannot buy fuel at the control price.

Despite the abuses in the system, Maku said the government would retain the subsidy regime because that was what the people wanted.

He said, “Government has paid subsidy for every litre of fuel sold in this country but dealers are selling above the regulated price. We have not deregulated fuel pump prices. For every price above N97 per litre, Nigerians are paying twice.

“People are profiteering from the system and it is wrong. Nigerians should have mercy on Nigerians. We are retaining the subsidy because that is what people want now.”

Okeke in his suit is asking the court to stop Jonathan from further payment of subsidy because the process is fraught with abuses.

The only way to stop abuse of the fuel subsidy scheme is the removal of the policy by the Federal Government, according to the plaintiff in a 27-paragraph affidavit deposed in support of the suit.

But while the spokesman for the Save Nigeria Group, Yinka Odumakin, said the suit was a grand plot to deceive Nigerians, human rights activist and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Femi Falana, vowed that civil society organisations would oppose Okeke and what the suit represented “vehemently”.

A political activist and elder statesman, Dr. Tunji Braithwaite, also described the suit as a “dubious diversion.”

Source: Punch