The Federal Government has said it is on course on fuel subsidy removal, and it is working assiduously to ensure the price stability of fuel in the overall interest of Nigeria.

Speaking during the Ministerial Press Briefing in Abuja, Weekend, the Special Adviser to the President on Energy, Olu Verheijen, said it is the prerogative of the government to maintain price stability.

Verheijen argued that the developed countries, including the United States, do the same to prevent volatility in the economy, adding that the State Government intervention to stabilise prices does not remove the fact that subsidy has been removed.

She said, “the question of subsidy, the subsidy was removed on May 29, 2023. However, the government has the prerogative whether the US, in the West and other Eastern countries, all governments have the prerogative to maintain price stability and prevent social unrest.

“So, if prices are moving, they reserve the right to intervene. It started in the US during COVID. There were a lot of expansionist moves but also subsidies.

“All governments deserve that right. And so if for whatever reason the administration has reviewed that it is not the right time to have prices continue to fluctuate given the level of hardship in the country, given inflation, the government has the right to intervene intermittently.

“All governments do so but it does not take away the fact that the subsidy was removed”.

On tapping the country’s gas potential, Verheijen said part of the objective of the fiscal incentives that the President recently signed is to reverse the over 70% undeveloped gas reserves.

To do this, she said, “we need to address the fundamental issues in sectors so that we can attract capital to the infrastructure and there is no one who’s going to invest in Infrastructure if they don’t have assurance, the line of sight to the attractiveness of gas supply.

“So, if gas suppliers are not making any investment because the fiscal terms of the business environment is a very difficult one in which to invest, then it will be difficult to continue to mature mainstream projects and downstream projects because you have to deal with the ab initio problem which is gas supply.

“And that is exactly what President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has done by fast-tracking this policy directive to ensure that we have sufficient gas supply whether we’re trying to export, whether we’re trying to compress natural gas or liquefied for domestic use, whether we’re trying to have floating energy as an alternative way of getting gas into the market, all of those things are enabled by these policies”.