The Presidency on Wednesday said Nigeria will have to pay a price to continue subsidising Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, adding that the country may be left with no other choice than to continue borrowing to shoulder its fiscal overhead.

The President’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, said this when he featured on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme monitored by The PUNCH.

PMS is not deregulated by the Federal Government, as the price is sold at between N162 and N165/litre at filling stations, far lower than the actual cost of the commodity.

In June 2021, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mele Kyari, stated that petrol price should be more than N280/litre, while the commodity had been subsidised and sold at N162/litre since last year.

The regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) had planned to remove subsidy of petrol by June 2022.

The Nigeria Labour Congress and other pressure groups and trade unions had threatened nationwide protests but the Buhari regime suspended the planned removal of subsidy on Monday.

Following the decision of the Federal Government to continue subsidising petrol, the NNPC may deduct over N1tn in the next six months from the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee.

The Nigerian Bar Association, amongst others, had described the decision of the All Progressives Congress government to suspend its planned petrol subsidy removal as an election strategy.

But the presidential spokesman (Adesina) said on Wednesday that the decision of the Federal Government to propose an extension of fuel subsidy removal by 18 months wa s not political.