The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, has said it will be hard for Nigeria’s economy if any administration tries to reverse the fuel subsidy removal after President Bola Tinubu’s government.
Wale Edun added that any plan by other administrations to reverse forex subsidy will have to deal with the gains recorded from the two policies.
Edun said with the removal of fuel and forex subsidy the federal government has been able to reduce the percentage Nigeria was spending on service debt from her revenue from 98 percent to 61 percent.
He said such administration would have to borrow money to run every responsibility of government, including payment of salaries, or even to construct a kilometer road
Edun’s statement was posted by Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi, on his X handle, on Thursday.
The Minister of Finance also explained that the federal government took the best decision by removing the fuel and forex subsidy.
He said, “Let me be very frank here if any president will come up and dare to return to payment of petrol subsidy or forex subsidy, he will have to deal with reversing the gains we have attained with reduction of percentage of what we were spending out of all our revenue to service debt, which we have reduced from 98% to 67%.
“Then, he will need to borrow to run virtually every other responsibilities of government, including to pay salaries or even to construct a kilometer of road.
“With this, more debts are incurred and debt servicing will now exceed all our revenue thereby leading to bankruptcy and a total collapse of every facets of the governance system.”
