President Bola Tinubu’s inauguration speech included the announcement that fuel subsidy is gone which led to a rise in fuel prices and scarcity of the product nationwide.
Despite the government’s previous declarations that it could no longer afford to fund fuel subsidies, the ASUU chief, who addressed the audience at the Alex Ekweme Federal University in Ebonyi State, expressed disbelief at Nigeria’s ability to export crude oil but struggle with refining it domestically.
“We do not believe in the existence of fuel subsidies. It is baffling that we have been exporting crude oil for the past 70 years and yet cannot refine it for our own people at the Nigerian rate, rather than at the dollar rate. Something is clearly amiss,” he stated during a lecture titled ‘Advancing Technology through Quality Education, the ASUU Perspective.’
The ASUU chief also criticized the country’s lack of functional refineries and lamented the exorbitant sums spent on maintaining the existing ones.
“Building a refinery is not a complex undertaking. However, when a country deliberately neglects the maintenance of its refineries while still paying the employees, it raises questions,” he pointed out.
Nigeria has expended trillions of naira over the past few years on refinery renovations, yet there has been no improvement. Meanwhile, smaller countries have successfully operated functioning refineries.
