President Bola Tinubu must be able to explain to Nigerians in clear terms the areas he is applying the money generated from the removal of the subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), otherwise known as petrol, to justify his asking Nigerians to sacrifice more.
These was the argument of Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), in the February 25, 2023 election, as he weighed in on the ongoing dust raised by the recent increase of the pump price of the commodity from N617 to N890 by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC).
Obi, former Governor of Anambra State, told News Central Television that since the President announced the removal of subsidy during his inaugural address, on May 29, 2023, there had been a lot of opaqueness surrounding the proceeds of the policy, adding that this must not be allowed to continue.
It was also at a point the LP leader, also spoke on Nigeria’s democracy with respect to advancing it to meet the expectation of the people adding that there was actually the need to adjust the current presidential system by introducing some shades of parliamentary elements in it to make it more wholesome.
His words: “We need more transparency and when you talk about transparency in figures, you show it, you demonstrate it. One plus one is two. It is not something you say, it’s just two because of. Tell us how you arrived at it and we’ll believe. When we talk about subsidy, I’ve continuously said, if we’re removing subsidy, what are we replacing it with? Where are we applying that subsidy we removed to?
“So, if you say to me, that I’ve removed subsidy, I’m going to use it to build this number of classrooms, to be able to pull out of school children into schools, so we can verify and follow and track those schools – we have issues in health, primary healthcare, especially the issue of infant mortality – removal of subsidy, will enable us to build this number of primary healthcare in this number of places, so that we can measure it.
“You don’t remove something without talking about where it is replaced and where we are moving our money to. Or that it is helping us to manage our debts. But, here we have fuel subsidy has been removed, the debt is increasing, and we’re not seeing anything.
Obi, who insisted that Nigerian leaders must embrace the full tenets of democracy, advocated for an infusion of parliamentary system in the mode of the government structure to be able to derive optimal gains based on accountability, openness and responsibility to the people.
His added: “We have to continue our journey on democracy. It is the government of the people by the people and for the people. However, we have to tweak it where we have some level of parliamentary system in it like it is in South Africa.
