•PENGASSAN wants FG to raise NNPC’s stake in 650,000 bpd refinery to 45% Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja and Peter Uzoho in Lagos President of Dangote Group, owners of Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has advocated the total removal of fuel subsidy, saying it is no longer sustainable. The federal government had reintroduced subsidy on petrol, barely one year after President Bola Tinubu, during his inauguration speech on May 29, 2023, declared, “Subsidy is gone.” But in an interview on Bloomberg Television in New York on Monday, Dangote said the removal of subsidy would take care of any discrepancy in consumption figures and also help government save money.
“Once you are subsidising something, then people will bloat the price and then the government will end up paying what they are not supposed to be paying. It is the right time to get rid of subsidies,” he argued. Dangote further justified his call for subsidy removal by maintaining that countries of the world were doing away with the funding of petrol subsidy since it was not sustainable.
He stated, “All countries have got rid of subsidy. Let me give you an example. Saudi Arabia used to give what Saudis, the citizens, believe is their oil and it is their own God-given gift, so government shouldn’t charge them.
So government was selling it at a low price. “But today, as we speak gasoline (petrol) is about 40 per cent cheaper in Nigeria than Saudi Arabia, which I think doesn’t ma.