24th January, 2022
The Federal Government on Monday suspended the planned subsidy removal that will have seen fuel price hitting N302.
The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, had planned a nationwide protest on the planned subsidy removal on 27 January.
But Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed. who spoke at a meeting held at the National Assembly, said the suspension would be till further notice.
The minister stated that the Federal Government was not thinking in a direction of removing fuel subsidy now.
She said government knew the adverse effect the removal of subsidy would have on the people, saying that was why government is trying to work out the modalities to alleviate the effects the removal would have on the people.
According to her, until those details were worked out properly with labour, and with all the stakeholders in the sector, government would not remove the subsidy.
Ahmed said at this moment, removal of fuel subsidy was not on government’s plate right now.
She said fuel subsidy removal was something that needed to be worked out between the Federal Government and the states, as it is a federation issue.
Ahmed added that the Federal Government was working with the governors to see how they could continue with this policy direction of subsidising fuel for the foreseeable future.