Fuel subsidy: Transportation Experts Advises Hovts To Make Policies On Cost Of Transportation

A Professor of Transport and Logistics Samuel Odewumi advised the governments to shift its focus on policies that would bring down the cost of transportation and energy to ensure that the removal of the subsidy on fuel would not harm the citizens beyond its current inflictions.

Odewunmi,former Dean of the School of Transport and Logistics of Lagos State University said this in a virtual conference organised by the Chartered Institute of Transport Administration of Nigeria on Thursday,Lagos.

He called on the Federal Government to subsidized fertilizers for farmers, crude for local refineries, and tax relief for manufacturers.

The event was CIOTA Roundtable Discussion on Effective and Defective Palliative Delivery Strategies.

“Everything possible should be done to ensure the security of lives and property in the land, a significant increase in crude production to sure up revenue to strengthen the naira, the oil thieves must be exposed and punished to stop the larceny going on in the Niger Delta.

“We can subsidize production (subsidized fertilizers for farmers, subsidized crude for local refineries, tax relieves for manufacturers,”Odewunmi said.

Bayero  Farah, Director General/Chief Executive Nigerian Institute of Transport Technology (NITT) Zaria, while speaking on the NITT Template of Effective Technological Palliative, discharged a paper on Fuel Subsidy Regimes In Nigeria.

He recalled that “Fuel subsidies began in the 1970s and became institutionalized in 1977, following the promulgation of the Price Control Act which made it illegal for some products (including petrol) to be sold above the regulated price. 

“While the concept of subsidy itself is noble, according to him, its administration in Nigeria has been plagued with serious challenges.

“It includes; the unsustainable financial cost of subsidy, economic distortion, smuggling of fuel outside the country, endemic corruption, reduced investments in the downstream sector, among others,”Farrah said.

Prof. Callistus Ibe, a Professor of Transport Management at the Federal University of Technology Owerri Imo State noted that 

whenever the transport sector sneezes, all other sectors catch cold depending on the severity level of the sneeze of the transport sector.

Prince Segun Obayendo, President of CIOTA noted that the issue of fuel subsidy removal could not be over-flogged given the unpalatable consequences on the national economy and the lives of the people.