President Bola Tinubu has said that Nigerians were living fake lives before the petrol subsidy removal in 2023.
Tinubu, represented by Wahab Egbewole, vice-chancellor of the University of Ilorin said this at the combined 34th and 35th convocation ceremonies of the Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA) in Ondo State.
He noted that his twin policies of petrol subsidy removal and exchange rate unification were meant to save the Nigerian economy from collapse.
“We took the baton of authority at a time when our economy was nose-diving as a result of heavy debts from fuel and dollar subsidies,” Tinubu stated.
He said the subsidies were targeted at supporting the poor and making life better for all Nigerians, stressing that the economy needed drastic actions to avert collapse.
“Unfortunately, the good life we thought we were living was a fake one that was capable of leading the country to a total collapse unless drastic efforts were urgently taken.”
President Tinubu announced the removal of petrol subsidy on May 29, 2023. This decision has pushed the price of a litre of petrol beyond N1, 000 at filling stations across the nation. The subsidy removal was followed by the foreign exchange market unification, which has now seen the naira exchange at over N1,600/$ at both official and parallel markets. Both reforms have been painful to Nigerians, shooting up the cost of living in Africa’s most populous nation.
Meanwhile, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Jesutega Onokpasa, has expressed concern over the ‘bizarre’ level of comfort displayed by President Bola Tinubu’s administration in light of the soaring food prices.
In an interview with Arise News on Monday, Onokpasa stated that the hunger crisis in Nigeria is embarrassing, especially since the President had promised to eliminate hunger if elected.
“What Asiwaju promised us is that if we help him get to power he is going to produce food massively to feed Nigerians.
“We didn’t envisage this bizarre level of comfortability with prices just skyrocketing out of control”, he said.
Onokpasa continued, “I don’t know what happened to Asiwaju, in fact I’m a catholic and I will book masses for him. Whatever is happening let God deliver him from it.
“How can you be a president and prices of food are skyrocketing? If we can’t reduce the price of fuel can’t we feed people?
“Why is Asiwaju so reluctant to invest in Agriculture, he asked. “Nigerians are hungry and it is shameful that President Tinubu seems detached from the reality of the people”.
