The announcement, on Wednesday, by Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and National Planning, that the country’s National Economic Council (NEC) had approved the suspension of federal government’s planned removal of subsidy on Petroleum Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly called fuel, in June, sent policy analysts into a frenzy, and must have been music to the ears of Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president-elect, who would have, barring any court intervention, become president at time.
But on Friday, the minister backtracked, disclosing in a statement, that the plan to get rid of subsidy remained in place, and that the subsidy regime would still be discarded in June 2023.
