NIGERIA'S FUEL SUBSIDIES HAVE BECOME VERY POLITICIZED, A FINANCIAL EXPERT REGRETS

The withdrawal of fuel subsidies, according to Mr. Tilewa Adebayo, Chief Executive Officer of CFG Advisory, has been intensely politicized in light of Nigeria's mounting debt profile.

In an interview with Arise Television on Wednesday, Adebayo made this revelation.

He was responding to the assertion made by the federal government that fuel subsidies will stop by May.

He claims that five years ago, he advocated for a more gradual approach to ending gasoline subsidies as opposed to the government's suggested strategy.

He claimed that if the government gradually eliminated fuel subsidies, the weight of Nigeria's mounting debt would be lessened.

Adebayo revealed that even though the federal government has increased its ability to generate non-oil revenue, it still needed to invest more money to grow.

"Unfortunately, we have politicized fuel subsidies. Five to six years ago, I proposed removing 10 or 15 per cent of subsidies yearly. If we had done that in the past eight years, the subsidy burden would have been over; suddenly, we want a big bang approach to ending the problem because subsidy gulps $10-15 billion annually", he said.

If the Central Bank of Nigeria's N23.7 trillion Ways and Means Advance is securitized, the Debt Management Office, or DMO, predicted that Nigeria's debt profile will reach N77 trillion in June 2023.

The Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, has remained critical of how fuel subsidies have increased Nigeria's debt load.

Ahmed proposed the withdrawal of gasoline subsidies as a remedy, saying President Muhammadu Buhari would make the announcement before to handing over power in May.