Former Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasiru Ahmed El-Rufai, disclosed that the federal government, helmed by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has been subsidizing Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), commonly known as petrol.
This subsidy, initiated on May 29th, 2023, has reportedly incurred trillions of naira in costs for the current administration.
El-Rufai emphasized that without these subsidy payments, the price of petrol per litre could have soared even higher than diesel, which currently exceeds N1,000 depending on the location. Presently, PMS is priced between N600 to N750 per litre.
Speaking at a capacity-building Building Workshop in Maiduguri, the former governor stressed the importance of leadership qualities such as decisiveness, trustworthiness, empowerment regardless of political, religious, or ethnic affiliations, effective communication, and resilience.
He underlined these traits during an interview with journalists after delivering a lead paper titled ‘Leadership and Public Policy: Navigating Challenges and Lessons’ at the International Conference Centre, Musa Usman Secretariat, Maiduguri.
“Though, it is too early to judge the present administration, is just been there for only nine (9) months, and you know leadership is work in progress, you start something as I said in my speech, you start a policy because you are absolutely sure is the right policy, but in the course of implementation, if you see bottlenecks, you modify because the keyword in leadership in my view is not ideology or anything, is pragmatism. You should always be pragmatic. You are not God, only God is perfect, so as a good leader, when you make a policy and you started implementing, and it doesn’t seem to work well, you should have the humility to stand back and say, this is not working.
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“For example, if you appoint a person to a position and he is not performing to expectation, you should have the humility to say, look, I need a better person to do the job perfectly. Leadership is a continuous thing and in a term of four years, you can’t assess a government of nine months.
“But as I also said earlier during my presentation, the removal of fuel subsidy by the present administration is another good policy by President Tinubu. I have always supported the withdrawal of fuel subsidy. But as you can see, in the course of implementation, the government has now realized that the subsidy has to be back, because right now, we are paying a lot of money amounting to trillions of naira for subsidy even more than before, because the impact has been seen and the packages of support that will reduce the impact have not been effective in reducing the impact, and so, the federal government has to backpedal by subsidizing petrol. Many people don’t know this. If they want to know whether there is fuel subsidy or not, they should compare the prices of petrol and diesel per litre. This is because, under normal circumstances, petrol suppose to be more expensive than diesel. As it is, diesel is above N1000, while petrol stood at about N600 per litre. So we are still subsidizing for fuel in Nigeria.” He stated.
In his opening remarks, Barrister Mallam Fannami, the Head of Service, extended gratitude to former governor El-Rufai for graciously accepting the invitation, recognizing the invaluable insights participants would gain from his extensive experience in public service throughout the 5-Day Workshop.
