₦airaland Forum

Nigeria is pouring scarce resources required to fix critical sectors such as education and health care services into subsidies on petroleum products and electricity, the United States Agency for International Development has said.

The USAID Country Mission Director, Stephen Haykin, who represented the US Ambassador to Nigeria, Stuart Symington, said this at the 10th Anniversary Colloquium of the Financial Nigeria Magazine in Abuja on Tuesday.


Haykin said the inability of the country to recover the cost of electricity as well as the failure to recover the full cost of production from pump prices of petroleum products meant that critical resources were being diverted instead of being invested in critical needs in education and health care.

He stated, “One proximate cause of poor health, education and nutrition standards is low public expenditure. This, in turn, is related to very low public revenues due in fact to low tax rates and weak systems for tax collection.


“Low social spending is also as a result of transfers from government to petroleum and power sectors, because fuel and electricity tariffs are below cost recovery levels.”

Attributing poor social development to crises across the country, Haykin said, “Fiscal, trade and other micro-economic policies tend to act as breaks on private sector initiatives on economic growth. Weak governance due to inadequate capacities or lacks of checks and balances also slows social and economic development.”

Also speaking at the event, a former Minister of Health, Muhammad Pate, said that about 40 per cent of under-five children in Nigeria were experiencing stunted growth.

Pate, who is currently an adjunct professor of global health at the Duke University, in his keynote presentation noted that the Nigerian political elite were serving themselves rather than the people.

He said, “After extracting almost a trillion dollars’ worth of oil since our national independence, we have a situation where poverty is going on. We have effectively squandered an opportunity to utilise the natural resources that we obtain purely by chance, not by hard work.

“Instead of investing to uplift our people’s lives, our political elites by commission or omission choose the path of short-term comfort and purchase of loyalty through economically unwise or corruption riddled national expenditure at the expense of economically sound investments in both human and physical aspects to transform our nation.

“For a country to realise its demographic dividends, it must first undergo demographic transition, which means a shift from high fertility and high child mortality to relatively lower fertility and child mortality.”

https://punchng.com/power-fuel-subsidies-gulping-nigerias-resources-for-health-education-us/

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Ok

Any government that sincerely wants to fix Nigeria should start from her porous border, an up-to-date database, budget implementation etc the we can start thinking of a progressive nation

I can't remember when last they visited the education system?

People spent 16 years at the elms of affairs, they didn't think to upgrade, repair or build new refineries, they chose paying their buddies subsidy while they inflate the figures themselves in their report


ffw to 2015 The fulani man upgraded our refineries to 80% capacity , some dunces started bombing pipelines claiming they are avenging a government that just got there and has no beef with them /


An enterprenure spoke with a fulani man , asked for permission and they told him to build his own refinery , that enterprenure has been in Nigeria for years, he didn't think building a refinery was befitting during the reign of terror of some people


I guess my point is subsidy will not end now , not until Nigeria has the capacity to build refine it's own crude , however subsidy fraud has reduced because last i checked only NNPC imports refined crude


Oh and beware of fake news supposedly coming from foreign media ... Trump denied calling Buhari lifeless

Just wait and see

RevenGeMission:
People spent 16 years at the elms of affairs, they didn't think to upgrade, repair or build new refineries, they chose paying their buddies subsidy while they inflate the figures themselves in their report


ffw to 2015 The fulani man upgraded our refineries to 80% capacity , some dunces started bombing pipelines claiming they are avenging a government that just got there and has no beef with them /


An enterprenure spoke with a fulani man , asked for permission and they told him to build his own refinery , that enterprenure has been in Nigeria for years, he didn't think building a refinery was befitting during the reign of terror of some people


I guess my point is subsidy will not end now , not until Nigeria has the capacity to build refine it's own crude , however subsidy fraud has reduced because last i checked only NNPC imports refined crude


Oh and beware of fake news supposedly coming from foreign media ... Trump denied calling Buhari lifeless

Sometimes I wonder how having no sense at all is now a trend.. Which of d refineries were upgraded to 80%? Is there an alternate reality where U guys live in or ur reasoning capacity was uninstalled..? D govt claims to have removed subsidy and gave it a baptismal name of under recovery but U in ur infinite dementia is saying subsidy fraud reduced and will not end now... Anyway what's d point in making someone with no reason see reasons?

Nbote:
Sometimes I wonder how having no sense at all is now a trend.. Which of d refineries were upgraded to 80%? Is there an alternate reality where U guys live in or ur reasoning capacity was uninstalled..? D govt claims to have removed subsidy and gave it a baptismal name of under recovery but U in ur infinite dementia is saying subsidy fraud reduced and will not end now... Anyway what's d point in making someone with no reason see reasons?

thank you for the insult late 15/ early 16 four refineries were worked on and it was reportedly at 80% capacity , just thereafter NDA started blowing up pipelines, check Google you'll find relevant article


As long as Nigeria imports refined crude there'll always be subsidy otherwise fagggots like yourself will cry to heavens how Buhari is making your life hell for making you buy petrol at 330 / liter { which is the current landing cost}


What Buhari removed is subsidy fraud that occurred through payment of subsidy to different / individual marketers whose business and services may not exist only NNPC imports our fuel as at today