Peter Obi, Labour Party’s presidential candidate in the last presidential election in Nigeria has backed President Bola Tinubu on fuel subsidy removal.
Tinubu, in his inaugural speech on 29 May, 2023 openly said ‘fuel subsidy is gone.’ Two days after that, the prices of petroleum product was hiked to between N488 and N555.
Speaking on Tuesday after attending the ongoing case he instituted against Tinubu at the presidential tribunal, Obi said Judicial correspondents ambushed him at the entrance of the court and demanded that he should talk to them.
Obi said when he told them he did not speak on the matter before the court, they insisted that he should comment on the subsidy removal, which the government representatives were touting that he was in support of.
Obi, on his twitter handle said “Reacting, I told them that I’ve actually been in support of the removal of subsidies right from the President Goodluck Jonathan era, when I was a member of the Economic Management team.
“If you have followed me very well right from the time I was a member of Jonathan’s economic management team, I consistently maintained that subsidy should be removed because I see it as organized crime.
“People were just stealing the resources of the country and I showed it empirically in my statistical analysis that we were not consuming the amount of fuel they claimed we consumed.”
He added that “I also gave them the “tooth pain” removal analogy that if you approach a dentist to remove a painful tooth, he will apply a local anesthetic to numb the area around the tooth so you do not feel pain. It’s not the same thing as pulling the tooth forcefully, the pain you feel will be different. For me, I will go with the approach of the dentist, while supporting the removal of the tooth because I wouldn’t want to go through the pain of a forceful removal.
“Recall that even when Jonathan’s government wanted to remove it they came up with various relieving policies like Sure-P and others.
“If you read my manifesto you will see clearly how I planned to remove subsidies. I will govern with the people and show them statistically and empirically what we are going to save, and what we are going to do using the savings to better the suffering masses.
“The problem in Nigeria is that often government tell the masses to suffer and sacrifice, for a better future; but in future things gets worse.”
