President Muhammadu Buhari has said he has not taken a decision on the removal of subsidies on refined petroleum products as being suggested in many quarters.
Instead, the President said he had decided to handle the matter with care because most of the presentations he had received on the need to remove the subsidies had no depth.
According to a statement by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President, Mallam Garba Shehu, Buhari made his position known after receiving a briefing from the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and other agencies in the oil sector at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Monday.
Shehu said the President told members of the delegation that he would carefully review all the submissions he had received on the need to remove the subsidies.
Buhari was quoted as saying, “I have received many literature on the need to remove subsidies, but much of it has no depth. When you touch the price of petroleum products; that has the effect of triggering price rise on transportation, food and rents.
“That is for those who earn salaries, but there are many who are jobless and will be affected by it.”
The President said subsidies were not necessarily the most serious problems in the nation’s oil and gas sector.
Rather, he identified lack of security, sabotage, vandalism, corruption and mismanagement as the bane of the industry.
“We have to go back to the good old days of transparency and accountability,” the President said.
He, therefore, directed the NNPC to review existing agreements for the swapping of crude oil for refined products.
The review, he said, was necessary in order to inject more honesty and transparency into the process so as to reduce costs.
Buhari also asked the NNPC management to do more to improve the supply of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (cooking gas).
