FORMER president, Olusegun Obasanjo, revealed that fuel subsidy which was removed by the Federal Government in 2023 has been re-introduced due to inflation. President Bola Tinubu during his inaugural address on May 29, 2023, had declared that fuel subsidy “is gone.” The development has led to the increase of petrol price from about N200 to over N800 per litre. In an interview with the Financial Times, Obasanjo faulted the manner in which the subsidy was removed by the government.
According to him, the government should have implemented some measures before the subsidy removal.
He, however, explained that the subsidy has “come back” due to the inflation rate.
“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done. Not just wake up one morning and say you removed the subsidy. Because of inflation, the subsidy that we had removed is not gone. It has come back”, Obasanjo said.
He also highlighted the need for investor confidence in Nigeria, stating, “you have to go from a transactional economy to a transformational economy.”
Some of the demands of the ongoing nationwide protest is reinstatement of the fuel subsidy regime.
But Tinubu, in his Sunday broadcast, ruled out the possibility of returning fuel subsidy.
He described the decision to remove the fuel subsidy as painful but necessary, while arguing that it had been a “noose around the economic jugular of our Nation” and had hindered economic development and progress.
