BY DANIEL IDONOR

ABUJA – THE Federal Government, Wednesday, said it was yet to fix a definite take-off date for the implementation of the removal of petroleum subsidy.

Briefing State House correspondents, after the last Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting for 2011, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, the Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, who was joined by Minister of State Finance, Alhaji Yerima Ngama, said the government was still engaging different groups in dialogue for proper understanding of the subsidy issue.

He said “no take-off date has been announced. The truth of the matter is our country is in a very difficult economic situation to continue to run Nigeria with one third of the budget set to subsidise one product is absolutely a path to a greater difficulty for the economy. We have continued to be talking about this because every sector we opened up has produced results”.

According to Maku “people who are emotionally talking about it, are not actually addressing what we are saying. Let’s take the media, before now it was only NTA, until government deregulated broadcasting in the country. Before you could not set up a private radio station in this country or a television station, when a government deregulated what do we have today? We have private television stations that are now competing with NTA and FRCN. If government decided to control broadcasting in the country all of you would have been out of job”.

“I know we all feel emotional about subsidy. If you look at the movement of economy all over the world, unless we don’t want to develop this country and move forward, in broadcasting we have seen results. So also is the case in cement production, banking, aviation, and telecommunication,” the minister stated.

The minister stated that the increasing nation’s domestic debt put at over N500 billion has made the removal of petroleum subsidy inevitable adding that the nation stands the risk of running into economic crisis if it fails to deregulate the oil and gas sector.

Maku lamented that after 33 years of investments in the oil and gas sector it was sad that Nigeria has not benefited by way of credible investments in the sector.

“If we have wasted time in the past, this is the time we need to take a decision. No leader in the world would want to punish its citizens. The future holds promises because there is no sector that we have deregulated that has not succeeded. This is the path to growth, development and opportunity. This is the way to go”, the minister said.

He disclosed that Nigeria was the only country in the world with the level of oil and gas resources that had failed to deregulate the sector and urged Nigerians to bear with the government over its decision to deregulate the sector.

“We are urging Nigerians to take a harder look at what the government has proposed. It will save Nigeria, it will create jobs and investment opportunities. We are calling for understanding on this issue given the budgetary constraints,” he appealed.