The Governor of Ebonyi State, Francis Nwifuru, has stated that President Bola Tinubu was the first to suffer the impact of fuel subsidy removal.
President Bola Tinubu had in his inaugural speech on May 29 declared that “fuel subsidy is gone”, a move that has seen the price of petrol and other commodities skyrocket.
With the impact of fuel subsidy removal biting harder, organised labour is set to embark on an indefinite strike on October 3.
Speaking in Ebonyi State during a media chat and account of stewardship by members of the state executives on Saturday, Governor Nwifuru stated that the President was paying a heavy price for the subsidy removal beyond the basic knowledge of Nigerians.
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He argued that by ending the subsidy regime, Tinubu was “the first person that paid the price”, which he described as heavier and more than what anybody could suffer.
“The President decided to remove it and paid a price. The price is not only that Nigerians are castigating him. Uninformed Nigerians are castigating him without knowing the truth because those who benefit from the industry are the ones feeding them negatively,” the governor said.
“On the issue of fuel subsidy removal, I said clearly that it is only Mr President that paid the supreme price by having the capacity and decided to take that menace called fuel subsidy that almost destroyed this country.
According to the governor, if the president had not removed the fuel subsidy, he would have benefited most from it, and the country’s debt would have been aggravated.
He argued that since the removal of the fuel subsidy, the state allocation has increased from the regular disbursement.
“Marketers will be visiting him (the President) and so many government officials. We know the genesis, we know the trouble Nigerians are passing through. But you can’t compare this trouble that is temporal to what we were into,” he said.
“If Tinubu on his own hadn’t conceived the idea of removing fuel subsidy, by now, this nation wouldn’t have had 20 kobo to share as federal allocation. We almost borrowed to share.
“You must suffer to get it right, you must know what you want. Mr. President assured us that he knew why he wanted to be president. He is not here to make money. If he was here to make money, the fuel subsidy would have been there and he wouldn’t have removed it.”
Nwifuru also stated that due to the benefits attached to the subsidy, people in his shoes might have had less motivation to stall the removal.