The disclosure was made by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, during an interaction with newsmen in Abuja on Thursday, September 11, 2020.
Sylva said,
“It is time for Nigerians to face reality and do the right thing.
What is deregulation going to do? It is going to free up a lot more money. At
least from the very beginning, it will save us up to a trillion, and more every
year. Already, we have taken off the budgetary provision for the subsidy which
is about N500 billion in the budget.
“Also, we have taken off the excess forex price that special rate
that was given to NNPC which also came at a cost. So, all the money that we
used to defend the Naira at that time to subsidize the dollar will now be freed
up for development. I believe that this discussion around subsidy has been a
vexed issue that has captured the imagination of this country for a long time
now,” the
minister said.
He pointed out that past administrations had lacked the political
will to deregulate the downstream sector, and remove subsidy despite attempts
to do so. At some periods, the time was not good for it.
The Minister
said, “And why did I say that time was not good for it? Does that imply
the time is good for it now? The problem around deregulation is that people
must understand first that the product we are talking about is a derivative of
crude oil.
