• Friday, November 22, 2024
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Why Tinubu didn’t wait till June to implement Subsidy removal

Smugglers raked in N17m/truck before subsidy cut – Kyari

Mele Kyari, Group CEO, NNPC

Though the budget made a provision for subsidy payments till the end of June, the figures are merely numbers as they are not cash-backed, necessitating the immediate implementation of the end of subsidy, says Mele Kyari, Group CEO of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd.

“There are numbers in the appropriation but we don’t have the cash in our hands,” said Kyari in an interview on Arise Television on Thursday.

President Bola Tinubu on Monday during his inauguration announced that “subsidy is gone” sending the market into a tailspin as those who had the products quickly shut their pumps and long queues emerged across the nation.

Read also: Subsidy: NNPC formally announces petrol pump price adjustment

Many Nigerians including labour leaders have made the argument that the announcement was hasty and did not factor in that subsidies had been paid on the products on which the prices have been paid.

But the NNPCL boss refuted this claim saying that the incorporation has been unable to meet its fiscal responsibilities including paying taxes and dividends because the Nigerian government has been unable to pay for subsidies.

Kyari said the corporation was being over N2 trillion and the debt keeps rising because even though there was a budgetary provision, the Federal government was not paying.

Isaac Anyaogu is an Assistant editor and head of the energy and environment desk. He is an award-winning journalist who has written hundreds of reports on Nigeria’s oil and gas industry, energy and environmental policies, regulation and climate change impacts in Africa. He was part of a journalist team that investigated lead acid pollution by an Indian recycler in Nigeria and won the international prize - Fetisov Journalism award in 2020. Mr Anyaogu joined BusinessDay in January 2016 as a multimedia content producer on the energy desk and rose to head the desk in October 2020 after several ground breaking stories and multiple award wining stories. His reporting covers start-ups, companies and markets, financing and regulatory policies in the power sector, oil and gas, renewable energy and environmental sectors He has covered the Niger Delta crises, and corruption in NIgeria’s petroleum product imports. He left the Audit and Consulting firm, OR&C Consultants in 2015 after three years to write for BusinessDay and his background working with financial statements, audit reports and tax consulting assignments significantly benefited his reporting. Mr Anyaogu studied mass communications and Media Studies and has attended several training programmes in Ghana, South Africa and the United States

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