Abdulaziz Yari, senator representing Zamfara west and director-general of the All Progressives Congress (APC) 2027 presidential campaign council, says anyone promising to restore fuel subsidy is deceiving Nigerians.
Yari, a former Zamfara governor, spoke on Saturday when
members of the APC national working committee (NWC) paid him a courtesy visit.
He was reacting to Atiku Abubakar’s pledge to restore petrol
subsidy if elected president in 2027.
Atiku, presidential candidate of the African Democratic
Congress (ADC), has said he would introduce a targeted subsidy, arguing that
the government has failed to account for savings from the removal of the
policy.
‘SUBSIDY RETURN IS IMPOSSIBLE’
Yari said there was no provision for petrol subsidy in the
2023 budget passed by the national assembly before President Bola Tinubu
assumed office.
“Before Asiwaju came in in 2023, there was no budget for
subsidy,” Yari said.
“National Assembly passed the budget in March, but there was
no provision for subsidy in 2023 budget. How is it going to run? Definitely,
whoever is there, the first thing he is going to do he will hands up.
“And anybody who is deceiving Nigerians, saying I’m going to
bring this thing back, he’s lying to himself; he is lying internally, he’s
lying eternally, he’s lying to Nigerians.”
The APC campaign council DG also questioned the amount
previously spent on petrol subsidy and the lack of clarity over Nigeria’s
actual daily fuel consumption.
“This is about N20 trillion deal for a year, going to where
we don’t know. Nobody can tell you, no one can tell you exactly how much litres
we need, what are the quantities per day,” he said.
Yari said that as chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum,
governors repeatedly challenged the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC)
to provide accurate consumption figures.
“As chairman governors forum, we challenged NNPC for four
years to tell us the exact consumption,” he said.
“They will propagate the numbers and say it, and we are
paying the numbers. When at the end of the day, we push harder, they said no,
‘we are doing subsidy for West Africa.’”
Yari said the APC would base its 2027 campaign on the
administration’s achievements and plans rather than attacking political
opponents.
“We are on the right path. By God’s grace, we have the data.
This is what we are going to do in our campaign — facts and figures,” he said.
“What we have done, what we achieved, and what we intend to
do in the future. We don’t call any names. Names are not important to us, but
rather what we’re going to do for Nigerians and what we’ve been doing for the
past three and a half years.
“Bola Ahmed Tinubu is doing his best, and we believe he’s
the right man for this job again.”
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