President-Elect, Buhari Plans To Remove Fuel Subsidy, Merge Federal Ministries Within A Week After Inauguration

President-elect Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday said he would end fuel subsidies and the oil and gas sector would be reformed as a matter of priority in order to attract new investments.

Unveiling his economic policies at a Lagos Business School breakfast meeting, he added that he would run a very lean government, which would involve rationalising overlapping and redundant ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) in line with the Steve Oronsaye presidential committee report.

THIS DAY Newspaper reports that Buhari, who was represented by former Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, at the meeting however disclosed that there would be very little action from his administration until October, partly due to what he ascribed to the fact that President Goodluck Jonathan is the author of the 2015 budget.

He said the federal government under the All Progressives Congress (APC) would seek “to align the electoral and fiscal calendars to avoid this type of problem in future”.
He informed his audience that the cardinal agenda of the government and their over-arching themes would be security, fighting corruption and unemployment.

“We believe that corruption has a very strong negative link to both security and unemployment,” he said.

He said there would be no real action until October partly because the 2015 budget “is Jonathan’s and may be fully approved in April. A very lean government is the focus, largely in line with the Steve Oronsaye presidential committee report. This report was available to the Jonathan government, but the will to implement it was absent”.

He promised that a cabinet would be announced very quickly within one week of inauguration.
“Anyone with a whiff of corruption or any kind of taint will not be in the cabinet. Our manifesto will reflect zero tolerance for corruption,” he said.

He acknowledged that the APC “is not a conclave of cardinals, as it includes the good, the bad and the ugly,” not