The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, recently discussed the country’s monthly spending of $600 million on fuel importation.
He highlighted that the high import bill is exacerbated by neighboring countries, including those in Central Africa, benefiting from the country’s fuel imports.
Edun explained these details during an interview on AIT’s Moneyline program, which was shared on its Youtube channel on Wednesday.
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He further elaborated that the country’s lack of precise knowledge regarding its internal fuel consumption was the driving force behind President Bola Tinubu’s decision to remove the fuel subsidy.
Notably, a report from the National Bureau of Statistics indicated that the country’s petrol import had decreased to an average of one billion litres monthly after the fuel subsidy was removed on May 29 last year.
He said, “The fuel subsidy was removed May 29, 2023, by Mr President, and at that time, the poorest of 40 per cent was only getting four per cent of the value, and basically, they were not benefitting at all. So it was going to be just a few.
“Another point that I think is important is that nobody knows the consumption in Nigeria of petroleum. We know we spend $600m to import fuel every month but the issue here is that all the neighbouring countries are benefitting.
“So we are buying not for just for Nigeria, we are buying for countries to the east, almost as far as Central Africa. We are buying. We are buying for countries to the North and we are buying for countries to the West. And so we have to ask ourselves as Nigerians, how long do we want to do that for and that is the key issue regarding the issue of petroleum pricing.”
