The Federal Government must follow a number of measures before withdrawing the subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), often known as petrol.
Professor Kingsley Moghalu remarked on Friday that one of the most important things to take is to establish a functional public transportation system in the country.
During an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, Moghalu, who served as deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from 2009 to 2014, made the recommendation.
“If you spent N1 trillion; you don’t even have to do that,” he said. “If you spend N500 billion, you could have a very effective public transportation system across this whole country and the people, therefore, who can afford petrol when you remove the subsidy – the middle class and wealthy people; they can carry on and poor people who can’t afford the commercial price of petrol which is being subsidised today can use public transport to move around.
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“That is what we should be going for but that is not where we are at this point.”
The former presidential candidate and political economist is also in favor of eliminating the country’s gasoline subsidy.
However, he wants the removal to take place only when the government has made appropriate preparations to meet the demands of the society’s underprivileged.
According to Moghalu, the current price of petrol in Nigeria is outrageously low when compared to other African countries, which is a major factor fueling petrol smuggling in some parts of the country.3
