The candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 presidential election, Peter Obi, has insisted that fuel subsidy is an organised crime and that he would have removed it if elected as the Nigerian president.
Obi, who said this on Monday while speaking on Arise TV’s ‘The Morning Show’, however, faulted the approach adopted by President Bola Tinubu in removing the subsidy, saying that he would have taken a better thought-out approach before removing it to avert the current acute effects and looming strike by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC).
The former Anambra State Governor during the programme monitored by SaharaReporters said, “Let me reiterate my position, and I say it, fuel subsidy is organised crime as it was being practised. In my tweets of September 19, 2022, and in my manifesto, it showed clearly the way we would have approached it.
“Fuel Subsidy is an organised crime. I have said this repeatedly that it should be removed. I mentioned it repeatedly during the campaign. I mentioned that what we are consuming is far above what we are supposed to be consuming.
“Governor Isah Yaguda in his interview recently said that a friend of his who was involved in fuel subsidy, gains and everything told him that it is criminals that are even tired of making money through that type of crime, it should be removed. This shows there is a criminality side of it.
“Since the subsidy has been removed, our consumption is just about half of what it is. For me, the approach would have been to remove the corruption and criminal side of it and remove the excess demand that is not factual.
“By doing this, you would have reduced it by 50 per cent. The remaining 50 per cent is what we would have been able to, after consultation with various stakeholders, find a way in an organised manner, remove and show the proceeds or the gains of the removal to be invested in critical development areas – education, health and pulling people out of poverty.
“When you do it in an organised manner, with proper palliatives that are well structured, thought after, not just haphazardly, you would have been able to see Nigerians go along with you.
“One of the things we are suffering with this announcement is what I can call the announcement effect. Policies like these are not what you just announce haphazardly. There are things you thought through. That is what we would have done as the Labour Party.”
