The Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Silva has assured Nigerians that the Federal Government has no immediate plan to remove fuel subsidy.
The Minister made this known while fielding questions from legislators at a joint session of National Assembly Committees overseeing the oil sector.
Silver said that the official daily consumption rate of petrol in Nigeria does not reflect the actual consumption rate. He maintained that government does not believe that Nigerians consume over 60 million litres of fuel daily.
Read this: Equalisation Fund Arrears: Fuel Scarcity Looms As IPMAN Threatens Private Depot Owners
According to the Minister, there is lot of smuggling
and lots of our neighbours are taking advantage of the cheaper price in
Nigeria.
He said that Nigeria was subsidising for almost half of Africa which was very
difficult to manage.
He added that government was working to close up such leakages and when achieved, the cost of subsidy would be bearable. He said that fixing the refineries would also help to reduce the cost of subsidy and that government was doing lots to get the refineries working again
