Fuel subsidy: FG fooling Nigerians - Kaka

A member of the National Assembly,Senator Adegbenga Kaka, has said that the Federal Government is only fooling Nigerians on the removal of fuel subsidy.Kaka, representing Ogun East senatorial district in the Senate said this on Wednesday during an interactive session with members of the Ogun State Correspondents' chapel in Abeokuta.The senator, who was a former deputy governor of the state, said there was no subsidy to remove and wondered why the Federal Government refused to repair the nation's refineries instead of the importation of fuel which was costing the country huge sums of money.He expressed disappointment over the non take-off of 18 private refineries licensed during the eight-year rule of former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, adding that government should prove to Nigerians that there was subsidy to remove.He said, 'there is no subsidy to remove and you don't build something on nothing and expect it to stand. Once they cannot prove to us that there is subsidy, then there is nothing to remove. Rather, they should go and look for money rather than fooling us.'My contention is that there is no subsidy to be removed. We have had the charade under Babangida, Abacha and Obasanjo. In fact Obasanjo removed it about three times and yet people are still talking about subsidy.'The question we've asked the people is: who is subsidising who' Is it the Federal Government that is subsidising the poor masses or the poor masses that are being made to subsidise the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of government''Senator Kaka lamented that the nation's four refineries were not working up to 40 per cent capacity thereby providing opportunity for the cartel in the oil business to cheat Nigerians in the name of oil importation.'A situation whereby we have four refineries and none is working up to 40 per cent capacity utilisation to the extent that we have to carry crude oil in a dubious manner from the country to foreign lands to refine with the attendant costs of shipment, freight, insurance and other handling charges and at the same time incur the same expenses to bring it back to the country is what people are now calling subsidy,'Kaka noted.
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