The Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has defended the recent removal of fuel subsidy by the Federal Government, saying the decision was hard but inevitable, given the inherent ills in the subsidy regime.

Tinubu said in a statement released in Lagos that the subsidy regime had distorted a system where wrongdoers benefited at the expense of the innocent. He stated, ‘’The smuggler secreted fuel across the border while our economy crossed the border into fuel scarcity.

As the price stayed fixed at a low level, investors were apprehensive about fixing existing or building new refineries. Our petrochemical industry remained unfertilized because potential investors could not decipher how they could make a decent return under such a pricing regime. Because of these imbalances, we were forced to export hard currency and many jobs to purchase fuel and other products abroad.”

Tinubu said President Buhari’s decision constituted a major step towards stopping fuel importation.
The club of fuel importers, he said, had become a parasite and a drain on the economy. “With this decision the exploitation by marketers, the unchecked smuggling, mismanagement, loss of productive man hours with people waiting in fuel queues, traffic congestion and health hazards associated with black market will steadily pass away,” he said.

Further justifying subsidy removal, Tinubu stated, “Nothing in this world is perfect but this decision is a just and correct one aimed at bolstering the economy while better caring for those the system has unfairly treated.”