Fuel subsidy: CSO queries $800m World Bank loan

From Abubakar Yunusa Abuja

The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre has queried the $800m World Bank loan taken by the Federal Government as a palliative to cushion the effect of the proposed fuel subsidy removal, scheduled for June 2023.

The Executive Director of CISLAC, Auwal MusaRafsanjani, in a statement on Sunday, lamented what he described as the “nonchalant attitude” of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, towards the country’s crippling debt crisis.

According to him, borrowing to fund post-fuel subsidy removal palliatives is strange, noting that “if the fuel subsidy removal process has been suspended as announced by the Minister of Finance after the NEC meeting at the end of April, then the government should return the borrowed money because what are we taking the loan for?”

Mr Rafsanjani said the news of the borrowed $800 million from the World Bank sent waves of worry in the minds of Nigerians as Nigeria’s revenue collection in 2022 stood at N10 trillion, with a debt of about N77 trillion.

“In 2022, Nigeria paid about N7 trillion in fuel subsidy and in 2023, from January to June when the country intends to stop paying the subsidy, it is N3.6 trillion. So if we are paying such a whopping amount of money when subsidy is removed, we should have enough savings instead of taking additional loans, we can use the subsidy funds for post fuel subsidy removal.”

He said rather than borrow money from the World Bank, what the government needed to do was to cut waste, while querying spending by the Ministries of Aviation and