By DESPITE acute hardship including deaths as a result of hunger no thanks to the public proclamation of the removal of fuel subsidy on the day of his inauguration on May 29,2023, Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu says he has no regrets.
According to him, Nigeria cannot continue to be Father Christmas to neighbouring countries in such reckless manner.
The former Lagos governor told reporters during a chat on Monday at his Bourdillon residence in the highbrow Ikoyi area of the state.
“I don’t have any regrets whatsoever in removing petrol subsidy.
“We were spending our future; we were just deceiving ourselves, that reform was necessary,” he blushed.
Tinubu said petrol subsidy removal some 18 months ago has upped competition within the sector and that the pump price of petrol has gradually crashed.
“The market is being saturated. No monopoly, no oligopoly, a free market economy flowing,” he said.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain also said he does not believe in price control and he won’t go that path.
“I don’t believe in price control, we will work hard to supply the market,” he said.
Stonix News reports that Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, faces energy challenges, with all its state-owned refineries non-operational.
The country was heavily reliant on imported refined petroleum products, with the state-run NNPC being the major importer of the essential commodities.
Fuel queues were commonplace in the country. Prices of petrol soared since the removal of subsidy in May 2023, from around N200/litre to over N1,000/litre, compounding the woes of the citizens who power their vehicles, and generating sets with petrol, no thanks to decades-long epileptic electricity supply.
The government simultaneously unified forex windows, with the value of the naira nosediving terribly from $1/N700 to over $1/1600 at the parallel market.
Prices of food and basic commodities immediately climbed through the roof as Nigerians battled attendant inflation.
Amid the above described scenario, President Tinubu insisted that he has no regret in his public proclamation of the removal of fuel subsidy.
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