Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria has said the fuel subsidy removed in June 2023 by President Bola Tinubu’s administration has come back due to inflation.
Obasanjo disclosed this in a recent interview with the Financial Times seen by 9News Nigeria.
In the interview, Obasanjo faulted how Tinubu woke up one morning and removed fuel subsidies without thinking about the implications.
According to him, the government should have put measures in place before the fuel subsidy removal.
“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.
His remark comes amid the ongoing hunger protests in Nigeria.
The protests, which commenced on Thursday, entered day 5 on Monday with a major demand for the return of the fuel subsidy regime.
However, President Tinubu in his Sunday broadcast while appealing to protesters to suspend demonstrations, said his administration’s decision to remove fuel subsidy is painful but necessary as it constituted a noose around the economic “jugular of our Nation and impeded our economic development and progress.”
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