The Coalition of Northern Group, on Tuesday in Kaduna, has aligned on the fuel subsidy removal as announced by President Bola Tinubu on May 29.
The CNG, a coalition of 150 Civil Society Organisations in the North, also knocked the former President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, for allegedly pursuing unpopular deregulation programmes.
The coalition maintained that, the $15.6 billion spent annually on subsidies could build a railway from Lagos to Kano, Port-Harcourt to Maiduguri, and Lagos to Calabar combined.
Spokesman of the CNG, Abdul-Azeez Sulieman while reading from a Communique after a One-Day Town Hall Meeting in Kaduna, insisted that, the N2.91 trillion spent by the Federal Government on petrol subsidy between January and September 2022, was largely responsible for the country’s dwindling public finances.
According to the communique, available data has exposed the unforgivable level of disabling corruption perpetrated with the subsidy regime in favour of a few individuals at the expense of public projects that cost less than Nigeria’s $15.6bn annual subsidy.
It added that, the amount spent annually on subsidy was far more than what is required to build a railway from Lagos to Kano, Port-Harcourt to Maiduguri, and Wembley-like stadiums in each of Nigeria’s six geo-political zones.
The Communique partly read, “Successive governments in Nigeria have tried and failed to remove or cut the subsidy, which has greatly constrained Nigeria’s development goals, as the subsidies mostly only benefit a few wealthy households.
“Concerned by the backlash from some quarters that followed the announcement of the withdrawal of the subsidies by the President, CNG convened a one-day stakeholder roundtable of all its 150 affiliates and other northern interest groups at the Arewa House, Kaduna today, June 6, 2023.
Punch/Taiwo Akinola
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