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The National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, Felix Morka, has said President Bola Tinubu did not independently decide to scrap Nigeria’s fuel subsidy, insisting that the policy had already been legislated by the National Assembly before Tinubu assumed office.
Morka made the clarification during an interview on Arise News, while defending the Tinubu administration’s decision to end the petrol subsidy and responding to criticism from former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and his political allies.
According to him, the National Assembly under the previous administration had already removed the subsidy and made no budgetary provision for its payment in 2023.
“When you say this president on day one announced a subsidy was gone, you forget, and I think we need to remind Nigerians, that the National Assembly under the previous government had already completely removed subsidy,” Morka said.
“There was no budgetary provision to pay for subsidy in 2023. That was gone already. So the president simply announced what the National Assembly had legislated.”
The APC spokesman argued that Nigeria’s financial situation at the time made it increasingly difficult for the government to continue funding the subsidy.
He said the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited was not contributing funds to the national treasury when Tinubu took office, while a significant portion of the country’s earnings was being consumed by subsidy payments and debt servicing.
“The NMPC was not contributing a dollar to the National Treasury at the time that this president was inaugurated. So where was the money going to come from?” he asked.
Morka further argued that more than 93 per cent of Nigeria’s earnings was going towards subsidy payments and debt servicing, making the continuation of the policy financially unsustainable.
He said removing the subsidy inevitably came with economic consequences because Nigerians had become dependent on artificially low fuel prices.
“When you have created, our country has created a system of dependency on subsidy, on cheap fuel, there was no way to remove it that the consequences that we have had to deal with would not be present,” he said.
According to Morka, maintaining the old subsidy regime would also have continued to create opportunities for corruption and rent-seeking.
He argued that the country would have faced even greater economic difficulties if Tinubu had chosen not to end the policy.
“This country today would have been long gone. The economy as we know it today would have been long expired had this president not taken the action that he did,” Morka said.
The APC spokesman also accused Atiku and his spokesperson of deliberately appealing to Nigerians’ emotions when discussing the subsidy issue.
He maintained that they understood the economic circumstances surrounding the policy but preferred to present the matter differently for political reasons.
