Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, has made clear that he supports ending fuel subsidies, but he has also laid out some requirements that must be satisfied in order to accomplish this goal.
According to reports, Obi talked with reporters on Tuesday at the Court of Appeal’s Abuja headquarters.
This was said in a statement released by the Abuja-based Obi-Datti Media Office.
As a member of the President’s economic management team under the Goodluck Jonathan administration, he was reportedly quoted as saying that his support for subsidy elimination dates back to that time.
Obi said, “If you have followed me very well right from the time I was a member of Jonathan’s economic management team, I consistently maintained that subsidy should be removed because I see it as organized crime. People were just stealing the resources of the country and I showed empirically in my statistical analysis that we are not consuming the amount of fuel they claim we consume.”
The LP president candidate differentiated his idea of Subsidy removal from what is happening in the country now that they are linking him to the two options available to a person having a tooth ache.
According to him, if you approach a dentist to remove a painful tooth, he will apply a local anesthetic to numb the area around the tooth so you do not feel pain.
Saying that it was not the same thing as pulling the tooth forcefully, he said that the pain you feel will be different.
The former Anambra State governor went further to say, “For me, I will go with the approach of the dentist while supporting the removal of the tooth because I wouldn’t want to go through the pain of forceful removal.
“Recall that even when Jonathan wanted to remove it they came up with various relieving policies like SureP and others.
“If you read my manifesto you will see clearly how I planned to remove subsidy, I will govern with the people and show them statistically and empirically what we are getting and how we are deploying it.
“The problem In Nigeria is that when people say let’s go and suffer, let’s go and sacrifice, they don’t see the results of their suffering and their sacrifice.”