Petrol queue
Atiku faults Tinubu on petrol subsidy removal
Despite also advancing plans to scrap the petrol subsidy regime in his campaign promises in the build-up to the just-concluded 2023 elections, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has faulted President Bola Tinubu’s approach to the matter.
Speaking, Saturday during his address to newly-elected PDP officials in Bauchi State, Atiku disclosed that his government would have adopted a different approach to solving the same problem of petrol subsidy removal.
It would be recalled that President Tinubu had sparked widespread negative market reaction over his announcement, last Monday, in Abuja of scrapping the petrol subsidy payment regime.
Tinubu who was making his inaugural speech at the Eagle Square, in Abuja, had famously declared ‘no more fuel subsidy,’ a pronouncement which hours later triggered rise in market price of the commodity to jump by over 200 per cent across the country.
While former President Muhammadu Buhari had in 2022 signaled the determination to remove fuel subsidy, the ex-leader had made no provision for the payment regime in the 2023 appropriation bill beyond the first half of the year.
Notably, the petrol subsidy removal was also top on the agenda of the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, although with a staggered plan to effect its implementation.
“Between 1999 and 2007, the PDP government initiated the petroleum subsidy removal and I chaired the committee. We achieved subsidy removal in two phases but only after providing palliatives to those most affected by the subsidy removal.
“We have the experience as a party in government. That is what we would have done and not just announced subsidy removal without discussion with the affected sectors of the economy. I think Nigerians should appreciate what they have temporarily lost,” Atiku told the PDP officials.
Meanwhile, the Organised Labour has geared up for a planned nationwide industrial action expected to commence from Wednesday, following a deadlocked meeting with federal Government and some its agencies, last week.
Rising from an emergency meeting of its National Executive Council (NEC) meeting, last Friday, comprising leaders of affiliated member unions, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) fixed next Wednesday to commence a nationwide strike, as they asked the government to reverse the petrol subsidy removal decision, and resume negotiation on plans for palliative measures to ameliorate the expected hardship which the new pump price of petrol would have on the general masses.
