Fuel subsidy savings eaten up by naira devaluation, Tinubu policies – Falana

Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Femi Falana, has argued that the savings expected from the removal of fuel subsidy have been wiped out by the devaluation of the naira and what he described as the government’s neoliberal economic policies.

Falana made the remarks on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics while discussing the impact of President Bola Tinubu’s fuel subsidy removal policy.

According to him, by the time President Tinubu announced on May 29, 2023, that fuel subsidy is gone, the subsidy had already ended because no money had been allocated for it in that year’s budget.

“At the commercial rate, by the time President Tinubu announced in May that fuel subsidy was gone, it had already gone because not a dime was earmarked for subsidy that year,” Falana said.

He questioned what had become of the estimated savings that would have been spent on fuel imports.

“The $10 billion that would have been spent on the importation of fuel, where is it?” he asked.

Falana argued that the expected savings had been absorbed by the weakening of the naira.

“The naira, the exchange rate, has been devalued. So it’s been eaten up by devaluation and other neoliberal policies of the government,” he said.