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President Muhammadu Buhari has been advised to work out “detailed and coordinated” plan to remove subsidy on petrol.
The advise came from the all Progressives Congress (APC) transition committee.
According to The Cable, the advisory body, also recommended that kerosene subsidy should be scrapped immediately. While kerosene is officially N50 per litre, the end users pay as much as N150 despite the existence of subsidy — a case of double jeopardy for the government and consumers but a source of massive income for marketers and fuel import contractors.
The Ahmed Joda-led committee also asked Buhari to privatise the nation’s four refineries by adopting the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) as a model.
NLNG is jointly owned by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) 49%, Shell Gas B.V. 25.6%, Total LNG Nigeria Ltd 15% and Eni International 10.4% — but it is not managed by the Nigerian government, unlike the nation’s refineries which are solely managed by the NNPC.
These recommendations, it was learnt, are intended to “eliminate waste and redirect resources to fuel development, growth and job creation”,
Recall that attempts by the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan to remove the subsidy in 2012 were greeted with nationwide protests amidst allegations of scam in payments to marketers running into trillions of naira. Jonathan eventually reversed the policy.