FG Spends More Money Than Previously On Fuel Subsidies — El-Rufai

Nasir El-Rufai

FORMER Kaduna state governor Nasir el-Rufai claims that the federal government is now spending more on gasoline subsidies than it did in the past.

During his inaugural speech on May 29, 2023, President Bola Tinubu said that the fuel subsidy “is gone.”

However, Nasir El-Rufai claimed that the government had begun providing fuel subsidies in an interview with media following his delivery of the lead paper at a workshop on capacity-building in Maiduguri on Monday.

“The federal government is now subsidizing fuel; many people don't know this,” stated el-Rufai.

“It is a right policy. I have always supported the withdrawal of oil subsidy, but in the course of implementing the policy, the government realised that subsidy has to be back; right now, government is spending a lot of money for subsidy, even more than before.

“You start implementing a policy because you are absolutely sure it is the right policy, but in the course of implementation, you come across bottlenecks, and you modify.

“The keyword in leadership, in my view, is pragmatism. You should be pragmatic. So when you make a policy, you start implementing it, and it doesn't seem to work well. You should have the humility to stand back and say this is not working, and you modify it.”