Obi backs subsidy removal

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25, 2023, presidential election, Peter Obi, has broken his silence on the removal of fuel subsidy announced by President Bola Tinubu last Monday.

Tinubu announced “subsidy is gone” after he was sworn in.

Obi, who said he has always supported subsidy removal, revealed this on his Twitter handle on Tuesday.

He said, “I’ve actually been in support of the removal of subsidies right from the President Goodluck Jonathan era when I was a member of the Economic Management Team.

“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 organised crime.

“People were just stealing the resources of the country and I showed it empirically in my statistical analysis that we were not consuming the amount of fuel they claimed we consumed.”

Explaining further, the former Anambra State governor, gave a”tooth pain” removal analogy.

“If you approach a dentist to remove a painful tooth, he will apply a local anaesthetic to numb the area around the tooth so you do not feel pain. It’s not the same thing as pulling the tooth forcefully; the pain you feel will be different.

“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 a forceful removal.”

Referring to his manifesto on how he planned to remove subsidies, he said, “I will govern with the people and show them statistically and empirically what we are going to save, and what we are going to do using the savings to better the suffering masses.”