#SubsidyRemoval: President Buhari Had No Choice – VP Osinbajo

Muhammadu Buhari
Nigeria’s President

 

“If there is one person in Nigeria that believes that petroleum prices should not go up by one Naira, it is President Buhari,” Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, asserted earlier today at a public book presentation event in Abuja.

Explaining the difficult decision announced last week by the federal government, Prof. Osinbajo said the President simply had no other option.
Although the President did not want the fuel price to go up, the Vice President said “he is left with no choice. What can we do if we don’t have foreign currency, we have to import fuel.”
While observing the petroleum products are being imported today into the country, he asserted that even “if we repair our refineries today, we would still be able to refine 40% of our petroleum, so we still need to import.”
Prof Osinbajo then raised a rhetorical query: “in the absence of foreign exchange and you have to import your refined petroleum, what are you left with?
The Vice President who spoke at the public presentation of Anatomy of Corruption in Nigeria: Issues, Challenges & Solutions, a collection of essays edited by Yusuf O. Ali, SAN, asserted that “a lot of the problems associated with the refineries are corruption related.”
He also attended the public presentation of Prof. Ladipo Adamolekun, who just published his autobiography, I Remember.
According to the VP, corruption “explains why many States are owing salaries and continue to owe salaries.”
Furthermore he noted that “when we look at corruption and its deleterious consequences, we must relate it directly to what we are experiencing at this time.”
For example, he said “most of the States, since February 2016, many have been owing, some up to 6 months. When we came into office we tried to settle many of those debts but the Federation Account is lower and we are unable to find the resources to shore up the Federation Account.”