Arewa Economic Forum Wants Excess Allocation To States Diverted To Fuel Subsidy, Says Governors Not Justifying Increment

By Ayodele Oni

The Arewa Economic Forum (AEF) has advised the Federal Government to summon the political will in arresting Naira’s free fall by banning the practice of keeping dollars at home or in offices.

Also the forum demanded stringent measures against all those hoarding the dollars and their sponsors.

According to the Forum Chairman, Alhaji Shehu Ibrahim Dandakata, “The government should investigate why dollars go up after every FAAC meeting.

“Relevant government agencies should also ban the practice of paying for goods and services online in dollars.

“Dollar is not a legal tender in Nigeria. Every transaction must be in Naira as far as it is the country. If we don’t stop our obsession with the dollar, our Naira will never rise.”

Further defending its call for the subsidy reversal, the AEF said “We are therefore calling on President Tinubu to reverse the subsidy removal policy and use the extra money FAAC has been giving to the states to resume paying subsidy on PMS.

“The President should do this urgently if he knows he can’t find a way within the limit of his constitutional powers and political influence to make the governors more accountable to the people.

“A check we conducted on recent FAAC allocations has shown that some of the states have had their allocations increased by up to 90 percent with little or no improvement in the lives of the people. The percentage increase in the allocations to states after fuel subsidy removal is humongous.

“We are also calling on the government to put together a proper social register that can be used to distribute food items to Nigerians without the involvement of the state governments. If the government can put together a voter register, it can also give us a credible social register.

On the ongoing national discourse around State Police, the Forum rejected the idea, arguing that it would ultimately be prone to abuse by the State governors for political reasons.

“The best option will be for State governments to support and empower the existing Police Constabulary with funds and logistics. Such measures would assist the security agencies to tackle and check the worrying level of insecurity nationwide.”

The Forum also wanted priority attention on education, emphazising that teaching our young ones both the hard and soft skills can give them real sustenance and make them useful to the economy, adding; “Skills rather than mere certificates should be the priority”.

On food security, the Forum charged State governments to make irrigation facilities accessible to farmers, while the Federal Government work on promoting semi-mechanized farming that creates job opportunities for the unemployed as against fully mechanized farming that would render the “people jobless and redundant.”