The Federal Government on Friday announced the removal of the Petroleum Support Fund, popularly known as fuel subsidy.

The revelation came whilst the Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu was speaking with journalists at the Port Harcourt refinery where he further revealed that the removal became necessary because of the fraud clouding around the scheme.

Mr. Kachikwu further revealed that a contributing factor to the removal is the dip in the nation’s coffer, which had necessitated the signing of a new pricing template that puts the price “far below N87”.

”The objective is that we cannot afford to continue to subsidise. We cannot even understand where those subsidies were going to. There are many fraud elements in it so we need to cut that off. Also,the earning capacity of the Federal Government is deteriorating by the day with lower prices of crude and come out more,” he said

This declaration on fuel subsidy removal came two days after the NLC (Nigerian Labour Congress) had threatened it would vehemently oppose any cut on the subsidy regime. The NLC, at the end of its Central Working Committee meeting in Abuja, had warned the Federal Government against creating panic and confusion through the removal of subsidy.

According to Mr Kachikwu Ibe, who is also the Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the new pricing template signed on Thursday, removes the payment of subsidy on petrol immediately.