Falana to FG: Don’t think of fuel subsidy removal

Human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana, (SAN), has called on the Federal Government to shun the temptation of removing fuel subsidy now. He said that such an act would serve as political landmine for the new government . Speaking during the ‘7th Annual Distinguished Lecture’ of the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS), Lagos Chapter, yesterday, Falana said the government should jettison the idea of fuel subsidy removal now, but fix the nation’s refineries for local production of petroleum products. He said: “Buhari should not remove fuel subsidy in the next four years. Government has the responsibility to fix our refineries.”

He noted that $5billion has been spent for the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of the refineries in the last five years, noting that the facility was only producing at 10 per cent capacity. He said the government has the responsibility to declare openly to the public the number of litres of fuel being consumed in the country daily for planning purpose.

Rather than depending solely on importation, Falana urged the government to establish modular refineries of 20,000 and 25,000 barrels capacity per day in different locations in the country to ease importation. On the agitation for the scrapping of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the erudite lawyer said it would not solve the problem of corruption in the system. He suggested the need for the interpretation of the Bureau of Public Enterprise Act and the NNPC Act to understand where the corruption lies.