By Godwin Isenyo
A group, the Arewa Youth Assembly, on Thursday, called for understanding, calm, and support for President Bola Tinubu’s administration over the removal of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit otherwise known as petrol and the adjustment of pump prices.
Speaking to journalists in Kaduna, the Speaker of the Arewa Youth Assembly, Mohammed Danlami, noted that the subsidy removal was a tough but courageous decision which previous administration allegedly failed to take.
He commended the efforts of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Ltd in addressing the nation and promptly makes adjustments to the price of PMS to tackle fuel hoarders.
Danlami claimed that Nigeria previously paid an average of N120 billion monthly on petrol subsidy.
He urged Nigerians to remain calm and resist the temptation and instigation by those fanning the embers of hate to cause chaos and instability in the country.
He further noted that subsidy removal was in conformity with the Petroleum Industry Act 2021, which provided for total deregulation of the petroleum downstream sector to drive investment and growth.
“Few top politicians and key government officials were making billions of dollars from subsidy while Nigerians were unable to afford quality education, healthcare, infrastructure, electricity, telecommunications, stable power supply, agriculture and are faced with a high rate of unemployment and extreme poverty.”
He argued that with subsidy payment, “even if oil prices increase in the global market, Nigeria and Nigerians benefit nothing because the gains from the increase in oil prices are channeled to paying subsidy.”
Danlami stressed that payment of the subsidy is a waste of resources and a misplacement of priority with lethal consequences to the nation.
“Subsidy has fatal effects on inflationary pressures on the economy, which negatively impacts the exchange rates and results to all kinds of untold sufferings on Nigerian Masses and pushes millions of youths into different forms of terrorist activities and insurgency.
“To continue to pay subsidy is to intentionally rob the future of the generation yet unborn; it is to deliberately slide our nation into recession, high inflation rates, hunger, extreme poverty, and starvation
“We should not, we cannot continue to pay subsidies in this country if we want to have Nigeria as a nation in the next decades to come.
“Therefore, the Arewa Youth Assembly calls on Nigerians to support the removal of subsidy in order to save all, and desist from politicising it, or bringing in religious or ethnicity, because the danger that awaits if we continue to pay subsidy is coming for all Nigerians irrespective of their political inclination, tribe or religion.
“It is a tough and painful decision to make, but certainly the right step towards the right direction, to saving not just a few but the entire nation, to restoring the glory of Nigeria as the leader of Africa,” he said.
Source: The Punch
