Don’t be deceived, restoring petrol subsidy is unrealistic — Yari tells Nigerians

Senator Abdulaziz Yari, Director-General of the All Progressives Congress 2027 Presidential Campaign Council, has dismissed promises to restore petrol subsidy, describing them as unrealistic and deceptive.

Yari, who represents Zamfara West, spoke on Saturday when members of the APC National Working Committee paid him a courtesy visit.

His comments were directed at former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, who has pledged to introduce a targeted subsidy if elected president in 2027.

Atiku has argued that the Federal Government has failed to account for the savings generated from the removal of petrol subsidy.

However, Yari said restoring the policy would be difficult, noting that the 2023 budget passed by the National Assembly before President Bola Tinubu assumed office made no provision for fuel subsidy.

“Before Asiwaju came in in 2023, there was no budget for subsidy,” he 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.”

Yari also questioned the scale of government spending on petrol subsidy and the accuracy of figures previously provided on the country’s 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.

The former Zamfara governor said the Nigerian Governors’ Forum had repeatedly demanded accurate consumption figures from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company when he served as its chairman.

“As chairman governors forum, we challenged NNPC for four years to tell us the exact consumption,” Yari 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.’”