LAGOS (Sundiata Post) – President Bola Tinubu says he has no regrets about removing petrol subsidy in May 2023, insisting that Nigeria cannot continue to be Father Christmas to neighbouring countries.
“I don’t have any regrets whatsoever in removing petrol subsidy. We are spending our future, we were just deceiving ourselves, that reform was necessary,” the former Lagos governor told reporters during a chat on Monday at his Bourdillon residence in the highbrow Ikoyi area of the state.
Tinubu said petrol subsidy removal some 18 months ago have increased competition within the sector and that the pump price of petrol has gradually crashed. “The market is being saturated. No monopoly, no oligopoly, a free market economy flowing,” he said.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain also said he does not believe in price control and he won’t go that path. “I don’t believe in price control, we will work hard to supply the market,” he said.
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 soared since the removal of subsidy in May 2023, from around N200/litre to over N1,000/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.
