Kwara State governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq yesterday said his administration will deploy more resources into making people cope with the removal of fuel subsidy.
At a stakeholders’ meeting in Ilorin, the state capital, the governor said the policy was the lesser evil open to the federal government, saying other options such as printing new currency on a large scale to fund fuel subsidy would crumble the economy and subject the people to greater harm.
“At the moment, we will concentrate more on funding welfare programmes in order to keep the economy going and helping the people to cope with the temporary discomfort. This means we’ll slow down on other things that do not specifically address this need,” the governor told a crowd of the All Progressives Congress (APC) leaders, stakeholders, and community leaders who attended the meeting.
“We have rolled out several palliatives that cover different sectors, including medical workers, teachers, small and medium scale. Those who are not immediately covered will be taken on board very soon. We appeal for patience. We are working with the Federal Government to ease the temporary pains of the removal of fuel subsidy. Very soon, things will normalise, and we will be better for it.
“We will also reach out to the most vulnerable members of the society. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has advised all states to go ahead and look at ways of mitigating the effects of the subsidy removal until the labour and federal government reach an agreement on the new minimum wage. That’s why we rolled out new palliatives which include N10,000 transport allowance for workers. There will be food distribution, among several other interventions we announced on Monday.
“The federal government is also selling fertilisers and maize to state governments. The former CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele had bought a lot of fertilizers and maize which the federal government will now sell to the state governments and the states will pass it on to the public in ways to be determined.
“The challenges of mitigating the effects of fuel subsidy removal is an ongoing exercise which we will continue to look at. Not everybody will be captured from day one because of the cost of implementing the programmes. For example, nurses alone will receive about N60m a month under the new arrangement. If you look at it over a year, it is over N700m. So, when you look at the numbers, we are heading to a situation where all our statutory allocations and IGR are going into paying salaries. But for now, that is what we need to do to make sure people feed well and they are okay and then continue other businesses.
“It is important that we be our brothers’ keepers. Our efforts will not be confined to civil servants’ welfare alone. So, through KWASSIP, we will reach out to other segments of the society and also through food distribution like we did during COVID-19,” the governor added.
