Subsidy Removal: Palliative Can Easily Become Another Subsidy – CDD Member, Prof Ibrahim 

A member, of the governing board of the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD), Professor Jibrin Ibrahim has said the planned palliative by the federal government might end up like the situation with COVID-19.

According to him, the subsidy removal palliative might end up not serving its intended purpose just like in the case of the COVID-19 palliative during the pandemic.

Naija News reports that Ibrahim, while featuring on ARISE TV, said the fuel subsidy palliative can on its own become another subsidy regime on its own.

He said “The palliative can easily become another fuel subsidy and we saw that very clearly during COVID-19, where the ministry of disaster management claimed they were paying billions of naira every month for school feeding.

“And we knew that schools were closed, children were at home, and when that question was posed, the response was they had traced the people and students, and the question then became ‘how?’

“We do know that for the fuel subsidy, there has been a significant attempt to identify and map the poor in this country. This has been going on over the last decade; they do have a list of very poor families. There is a history of conditional grant supports to families.

“I believe that when the audit is done on some of the palliatives paid during COVID-19, it will be discovered that it’s one of the greatest robberies in the history of this country. So, that’s the problem with subsidy palliative.”

Recall that the government of former President Muhammadu Buhari had said it had secured the sum of $800 million from the World Bank, as part of its post-subsidy palliative plans.

It had promised to pay ₦5,000 to 10 million poor households for six months as a palliative for removing the petrol subsidy after June.