Nigeria paying for delay in fuel subsidy removal – Emir Sanusi

By Omodele Adigun

The Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, has said that Nigeria’s present economic hardship stems from the country’s failure to remove fuel subsidy over a decade ago.

Sanusi made this remark on Tuesday at the Oxford Global Think Tank Leadership Conference.

The former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria stated that Nigeria could have avoided today’s severe inflation and economic distress if the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan had been allowed to end the subsidy in 2011.

“If Nigerians had allowed the Jonathan government to remove the subsidy in 2011, there would have been pain. But that pain would have been a very tiny fraction of what we are facing today. This is the cause of the delay,” he said.

According to him, the CBN had earlier assessed the likely impact of subsidy removal and concluded that inflation would not have exceeded 30 per cent if the policy had been implemented then.

“At that time, we worked out the numbers in the Central Bank. I stood up and put my credibility on the line and said, remove the subsidy today. Inflation moves up from 11 per cent to 13 per cent, I will bring it down in a year. We would not have had 30-something per cent inflation,” he said.