Former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, has criticized the removal of the fuel subsidy by President Bola Tinubu’s administration in June 2023, stating that inflation has effectively reinstated the subsidy.
In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Obasanjo faulted how Tinubu’s administration removed the fuel subsidies, arguing that proper measures should have been implemented beforehand.
“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 have removed is not gone. It has come back,” the former President stressed.
He said there must be investor confidence in Nigeria.
“You have to go from transactional economy to transformational economy”, he added.
Obasanjo’s remarks come amid ongoing hunger protests in Nigeria. The protests, which began on Thursday, have entered their fifth day with a major demand for the return of the fuel subsidy regime.
In response to the protests, President Tinubu addressed the nation on Sunday, appealing to protesters to suspend their demonstrations. He acknowledged that the decision to remove the fuel subsidy was painful but necessary, describing it as a noose around the economic “jugular of our Nation and impeded our economic development and progress.”