El-Rufai, answering questions from journalists in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, on Monday, mentioned that the federal government has increased its payments compared to previous sums.
“Fuel subsidy is another policy that has been implemented by the president, it’s the right policy. I always supported withdrawing fuel subsidy.”
“But, in the course of implementation as you can see the government has now realized that the subsidy has to be back because right now, we are paying a lot of money for subsidy even more than before.
“This is because the impact has been seen and the packages of support that would reduce the impact have not been so effective in reducing the impact, so the federal government is back now subsidizing Petrol.”
He mentioned that a significant number of individuals are unaware that the fuel subsidy has been reinstated, “but, if they want to know whether we are subsidizing or not, they should compare the price of petrol and diesel because petrol should be more expensive than diesel but diesel is priced above a thousand naira while petrol is at N600 per liter.
“So, we are still subsidizing Petrol because the government has realised that they way it implemented the fuel subsidy initially required some adjustments. That’s what I keep saying about policy and policy pragmatism,”
