El-Rufai disclosed this while delivering the lead paper at a capacity-building workshop on Enhancing Skills of Government Officials in Policy Implementation and Productive Human Resource Management for political appointees in Maiduguri on Monday.

He said, “The federal government is now subsidizing fuel; many people don’t know this.”

Applauding the policy, El-Rufai added, “It is a right policy. I have always supported the withdrawal of oil subsidy; but in the course of implementing the policy, the government realised that subsidy has to be back; right now, government is a lot of money for subsidy, even more than before. You start implementing a policy because you are absolutely sure it is the right policy, but in the course of implementation, you come across bottlenecks, and you modify.

“The keyword in leadership, in my view, is pragmatism. You should be pragmatic. So when you make a policy, you start implementing it, and it doesn’t seem to work well. You should have the humility to stand back and say this is not working, and you modify it.”