Yunusa Umar
On August 19, 2024, a viral video showing the Group Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPC Limited, Mele Kyari, denying the return of fuel subsidy, surfaced on social media.
The video’s audio footage transcribed below;
“There is no subsidy whatsoever. We are recovering our full costs from the products that we import. We sell to the market. We understand why the marketers are unable to import. We hope that they do this very quickly and this is some of the intervention the government is doing. There is no subsidy”.
A Facebook user, Maryam Shehu also posted the video clip with the same caption; “There is no subsidy whatsoever, disregard fake news-Mele Kyari”. The video clip on the Facebook user’s page has 4 likes, and 2 comments as of 25, August, 2024.
An X User,@Abdullahayofel posted the 19 seconds video of Kyari with a caption; “There’s no subsidy whatsoever, disregard fake news – Mele Kyari 📹 Channels TV”. The post on the X user’s page has garnered over 101,000 views, about 300 reposts and quotes, about 590 likes and 74 bookmarks as of the time this report was published.
While some X users commented under the post with different captions. @ibunkun_tayo commented with a caption; “Daily we hear different stories”. Another X user@naija_eyes posted under the claim with, “the truth is out its out … Kyari no fake news with his government”. While “Kyari made the testament on the 9th of October 2023, but the government continues to pay subsidy back-door”, @blessed_gaga commented on the same post.
The same video clip can be seen across social media as here, here and here. It is quite significant to verify the authenticity of this viral clip considering that fuel subsidy removal has been a recurring issue in Nigeria’s democracy in successive administrations.
VERIFICATION
On May 29, 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in his inaugural speech announced the removal of fuel subsidy. The administration has since then, constantly maintained that there is no longer fuel subsidy but a recent report by The Cable said Tinubu has approved a request by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Ltd to utilise the 2023 final dividends due the federation to pay for petrol subsidy. The Cable report further added that the president has approved the suspension of the payment of 2024 interim dividends to the federation in order to augment NNPC’s cash flow.
This report has caused uproar online with speculations that subsidy was back and the now viral video featuring Mele Kyari has been used in refuting the speculation. When NV-A subjected the screenshots of the footage to Google Lens, the result led our fact-checker to the YouTube channel of Channel TV published on 9, October, 2023.
The Channel TV’s caption on the video reads; “There’s No Subsidy Whatsoever, Mele Kyari insists”.
The viral video which had the watermark of Channels TV showed multiple reporters questioning Kyari over return of subsidy. In the same video, the title for Kyari displayed on the screen was GMD (Group Managing Director) of NNPC Limited. Meanwhile, President Tinubu announced the appointment of a new NNPC board and management team on November 27, 2023 which transitioned Kyari into the Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) which is his current designation at NNPC Limited.
CONCLUSION
The video footage which claims that Kyari has disregarded return of fuel subsidy is an old footage from a Channels TV interview from October 2023, hence it is MISLEADING when put up as a basis for the current debate on subsidy’s return.
