As Nigerians continue to groan over President Bola Tinubu’s announcement on fuel subsidy removal, here are the latest update on Petrol scarcity, fuel subsidy and Govt/citizens’ reactions.
The Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State has cut down the workdays for State civil servants to three times in a week following the removal of fuel subsidy. It was reported that the Federal Government had implemented fuel subsidy removal, which has resulted in the astronomically rise in prices of goods and services and overall cost of living.
In a statement personally signed by Governor Obaseki on Tuesday, the Edo State Government lamented the hardship citizens are currently grappling with.
The statement reads: “The Edo State Government shares the pains of our people and wants to assure everyone that we are standing with them in these very challenging times.
“We want to reassure our people that we will do all within our powers as a subnational government to reduce the pains and ameliorate the sufferings our people are currently facing in the wake of the current realities.
“As a proactive government, we have since taken the step to increase the minimum wage paid to workers in Edo State from the approved N30, 000 to N40, 000, the highest in the country today.”
The Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, has said that his support for the removal of subsidy paid on petroleum products is true but with a condition that should be empirical to the people.
A reports reached us that Peter Obi made this known while addressing journalists when he attended his ongoing election petition case at the Court of Appeal headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday.
The LP presidential candidate said that his support for subsidy removal dates back to the Goodluck Jonathan era when he was a member of the Presidential Economic Management Team.
Obi said: “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 country’s resources, and I showed empirically in my statistical analysis that we are not consuming the amount of fuel they claim we consume.”
Candidate of the Action Democratic Congress (ADC) in the last presidential election, Dumebi Kachikwu, has said that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu‘s administration failed to apply a structured approach to the removal of fuel subsidy.
It was reported that Tinubu, while delivering his inauguration speech on May 29, 2023, declared that the ‘fuel subsidy’ is gone.
He stated that the proposed budget by his predecessor, Muhamadu Buhari, made no provision for fuel subsidy in the year’s budget starting from June.
Speaking on the latest suffering and lamentations by Nigerians following the incumbent President’s declaration on fuel subsidy, Kachikwu said on Monday that former President, Buhari, handed a banana peel to his successor, Tinubu.
According to him, Buhari did not want to take responsibility for the fuel subsidy a few days before leaving office; hence, pushed it to the incoming.
