Youth Party faults claim of N1tr saved in post-subsidy era

•Knocks govt for lacking courage to tackle oil thieves

Youth Party, yesterday, described as “audio savings”, Federal Government’s claim of having an accrual of N1 trillion, following removal of subsidy on petrol in the past two months.

National publicity secretary, Ayodele Adio, stated this during a courtesy visit to The Guardian, accompanied by the party’s head of digital media, Adeogun Oluwadamilola.

He said it was irresponsible of the government not to have prosecuted those whom it claimed stole from Nigerians through the subsidy scheme, even as he lamented that it is the people who always bear the burden of mismanagement of the country’s resources.

He said though Nigerians have been told that there is a savings of N1 trillion, the money is not on the table. “We call it audio savings. If indeed they have saved N1 trillion, why are you putting just N50 billion for small businesses, between now and 2024. Does that make any sense?”

Adio said subsidy, in itself, is not a bad thing. “But the problem is that everywhere around the world, you use subsidies to power productivity. A typical example is the Inflation Act that was passed by the United States. They are putting, at least, $460 billion to subsidise chip making, electric vehicles, and alternative energy.

“They are doing that to achieve two things: to create manufacturing jobs locally, and so that in 10 years from now, they will no longer be depending on fossil fuel.”

He noted, however, that subsidy, in the case of Nigeria was merely for consumption. “Ten years ago, for instance, we had one of the cheapest fuel and labour cost in the sub-region, so, those subsidies should have been able to attract industries into our country for cheap manufacturing because energy and labour was cheap, and that should have attracted people to come to our country to set up factories. But because we did not invest in productivity at the time, the subsidies were wasted; it was stolen and there is nothing to show for it.”

He explained: “If you say that a few Nigerians stole our wealth, if you are not going to plunge a lot of Nigerians into pain, I think that the sensible thing to do is prosecute those that have stolen our commonwealth.

“Because, you said they were a few corrupt people with millions stashed in their house, you could not go and arrest those people. You said you wanted to change the naira, so that they can’t go to the bank with the money, but the entire country was plunged into chaos, because you lacked courage to deal with the corrupt individuals.”