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| Professor Pat Utomi |
On Thursday, September 5, 2024, Professor Pat Utomi, a renowned expert in Political Economy, urged for the reinstatement of subsidies on petroleum products.
His call comes at a time when Nigeria is grappling with a severe scarcity of petrol and a significant increase in fuel prices.
Utomi emphasized the need to recognize and prioritize essential uses of fuel for Nigerians, suggesting that subsidies should be targeted at these critical areas to alleviate the current hardships faced by the population.
“The first thing to do is to recognise essential things that Nigerians need fuel for. I will subsidise those things,” he said on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
“There will be a subsidy. The Americans have subsidy for agriculture, it is a matter of where you direct it to.”
Nigeria is already struggling with higher living costs after government reforms to end a fuel subsidy and free the naira currency drove a spike in inflation, Channels Television reports.
It added that fuel scarcities have been more frequent since President Bola Tinubu removed the costly fuel subsidies that saw the government pay billions of dollars a year to keep the price of petrol artificially low.
Its price has since more than tripled in some states, with a knock-on effect on food and transport costs.
During the show, Utomi blamed the political class for the pains experienced by Nigerians lately.
“Nigeria’s political class is responsible for the Nigerian misery. The political class has failed the country.
“Look at the choices we have repeatedly made, look at the kind of National Assembly that we have. The political class needs to come out publicly before the country.
“In South-East Asia, people will come out and do a humiliation from what the public has suffered as a result of the irresponsibility of the political class in Nigeria.”
According to him, people feel disconnected from the political class.
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