President Bola Ahmed Tinubu resumed official duties as President of Nigeria on Tuesday, and went straight into a closed door meeting to deliberate on the fuel subsidy crisis.
He was received on arrival on his first day of work at the presidency by the Vice President, Kashim Shettima, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajiabiamila, the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, the Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited NNPCL, Melee Kyari, among other stakeholders.
Shortly after pleasantries, they all moved into the meeting.
Recall that while making his first inaugural speech on Monday, President Tinubu declared that the era of subsidy was gone, a development that has resulted in the resurfacing of fuel queues across the country.
Buttressing the Federal Government’s position, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Kyari, has lamented the funding constraints on the operations of the NNPC, especially debts owed for previous subsidy payments.
According to Kyari, it behooves the government to settle the outstanding bills incurred for subsidy payments.
He said, “Since the provision of the N6trillion in 2022, and N3.7trillion in 2023, we have not received any payment whatsoever from the Federation.
“That means they (Federal Government) are unable to pay and we’ve continued to support this subsidy from the cash flow of the NNPC. That is, when we net off our fiscal obligations of taxes and royalty, there’s still a balance that we’re funding from our cash flow. And that has become very, very difficult and affecting our other operations.
“We’re not able to keep some of this cash to invest in our core businesses. And the end result is that it can be a huge challenge for the company and we have highlighted this several times to the government.
“So, today, the country doesn’t have the money to pay for subsidy. There’s incremental value that will come from it. But it is not an issue of whether you can do it or not because today we can’t afford it and they are not able to pay our bill. That comes down to how much the federation owing NNPC now.
“Today, we are waiting for them to settle up to N2.8trillion of NNPC’s cash flow from the subsidy regime and we can’t continue to build this,” he explained.
