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The Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, has said that Nigeria’s present economic hardship stems from the country’s failure to remove fuel subsidy over a decade ago.
Sanusi made this remark on Tuesday at the Oxford Global Think Tank Leadership Conference.
The former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria stated that Nigeria could have avoided today’s severe inflation and economic distress if the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan had been allowed to end the subsidy in 2011.
“If Nigerians had allowed the Jonathan government to remove the subsidy in 2011, there would have been pain. But that pain would have been a very tiny fraction of what we are facing today. This is the cause of the delay,” he said.
According to him, the CBN had earlier assessed the likely impact of subsidy removal and concluded that inflation would not have exceeded 30 per cent if the policy had been implemented then.
“At that time, we worked out the numbers in the Central Bank. I stood up and put my credibility on the line and said, remove the subsidy today. Inflation moves up from 11 per cent to 13 per cent, I will bring it down in a year. We would not have had 30-something per cent inflation,” he said.
Enugu State Governor, Peter Mbah, has revealed that his decision to join the All Progressives Congress (APC) was inspired by President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms, particularly the removal of fuel subsidy and the unification of the foreign exchange market.
Speaking during a media chat on Tuesday, shortly after officially announcing his defection to the ruling party, Mbah said he was drawn to the President’s leadership style and reform-driven agenda from the outset of his administration
“I fell in love with this president from the day he made the announcement to remove fuel subsidy and unified the foreign exchange market essentially because, given my background as somebody who plays in the oil and gas sector, I’ve also written features in the past on why it has become necessary for the subsidy to go.”
The governor explained that his decision to defect was not merely political but rooted in shared ideals of leadership and development.
