Nentawe Yilwatda, the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress, has warned that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s proposal to restore fuel subsidy could reverse recent gains in workers’ wages, education financing and state government finances.
Yilwatda said returning to the old subsidy regime could also revive fuel queues and recreate the fiscal pressures that characterised the previous arrangement.
The APC chairman spoke in Abuja while receiving a delegation of economic stakeholders who visited him to discuss Nigeria’s economy, ongoing reforms and prospects for sustainable growth.
He said the debate over subsidy should go beyond the immediate attraction of cheaper petrol and consider its implications for government revenues and spending on salaries, pensions, education, healthcare and infrastructure.
“Subsidy may appear attractive because it promises cheaper petrol, but Nigerians must also ask the bigger question: who pays for the subsidy and what happens to the resources that government must divert to finance it?
