Kwara state governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq has said the administration would deploy more resources into making people cope with the removal of subsidy.
Speaking at a stakeholders’ meeting Monday evening, AbdulRazaq said the policy was the lesser evil open to the federal government.
He said 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 APC leaders and stakeholders.
“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.”, he added.