Renowned political economist and former presidential aspirant, Professor Pat Utomi has described Federal Government’s subsidy programme as a scam that has only enriched few people.
Utomi said this during the National Forum of Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) organised by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) in collaboration with FRC, yesterday in Abuja.
“For me once there is discipline and honest service to the people we shouldn’t be talking about subsidy. Most of what we call subsidy is just a scam that a few people got rich on,” he said.
Speaking further, Utomi narrated that on one of his trips from Abuja, a Senior Executive of the NNPC who was seated beside him in the plane pointed at some of the Private jets at the airport and said, “that’s Kerosene subsidy sitting there.”
While commenting on the recently released NNPC Audit report and the calls from some quarters for another audit on NNPC, Prof. Utomi said, “as we go into value for money, auditing as a way of looking at how the word is structured, there has to be necessarily series of new audits, but whatever value it provides those who are responsible should look at it and take whatever benefit we can take from it”.
While berating some state government for their Fiscal recklessness and imprudent management of resources, he advocated for the establishment of a special fund by the Federal government.
“I think that one way to bring in discipline, because there is a great deal of indiscipline in the state, is for the Federal government to perhaps create a kind of fund that will enable the states payoff some critical debts like salaries, which will also help inflate the economy, people can spend money and others can sell to others and consumption will all lead to some growth spots.
“Just like the International Monetary Fund has some conditionalities for countries, there should be conditionalities for state governments that are being bailed out and these should include very strict Fiscal discipline.
Any Governor from those states that charters an aeroplane to go anywhere will have to account to somebody.
Any of those misuse of resources with a certain amount going into abusive recurrent expenditures rather than on creating enabling environment for growth, infrastructure will attract a certain consequence. Consequence management should be in this kind of lending program,” he said.