THE Director-General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Lanre Issa-Onilu, on Wednesday, urged Nigerians to map out survival strategies amid the economic fallout of the removal of petrol subsidy by the President Bola Tinubu administration.
Issa-Onilu, a former spokesman for the President’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), said poverty will worsen if petrol subsidy is returned, as being demanded by #EndBadGovernance protesters in the last week.
“Anybody who is making a demand that subsidy removal should be brought back is making an emotional demand, not an economic demand because you have to also prove that if it is brought back, it will solve the issue of poverty; it will not, it will aggravate it,” Issa-Onilu said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily breakfast show monitored by News Point Nigeria.
“So, what we should be doing is: How do we survive in spite of the removal?’ We need to promote all the efforts of this government to ensure that we survive without that subsidy.”
He also admitted the trust deficit between leaders and followers in the country due to repeated cases of broken promises over the years.
Issa-Onilu, who addressed information managers, said, “It is difficult to talk to a people who have for several years been let down. Nigerians feel let down. The first question they ask you is: ‘Is this another promise that will not be kept?’ So, we must prove to Nigerians that this government is keeping to its promises.”
On Sunday, President Bola Tinubu ruled out the return of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) famously known as petrol.
During a broadcast to over 200 million Nigerians after days of unbroken nationwide #EndBadGovernance protests economic hardship, the President said the removal of subsidy on petrol was a painful but necessary decision he took for economic reforms.
The return of petrol and electricity subsidies has been some of the very clear demands of young Nigerians who took to the streets since Thursday to protest the economic woes confronting the country.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, faces energy challenges, with all its state-owned refineries non-operational. The country is heavily reliant on imported refined petroleum products, with the state-run NNPC being the major importer of the essential commodities.
Fuel queues are commonplace in the country. Prices of petrol tripled since the removal of subsidy in May 2023, from around N200/litre to about N700/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.
