According to Yakubu Dogara, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tinubu isn’t to blame for removing petrol subsidy.
Dogara said the president basically just announced the removal, when he said ‘subsidy is gone’ on May 29, 2023, during his inauguration, but didn’t take any action.
The previous speaker said that the policy was already there before Tinubu got elected because the budget approved by the National Assembly didn’t include any provision for subsidy payment.
The ex-speaker said on Channels TV last Friday that the claim about Tinubu suspending subsidy payment is not true.
He said, “In this case, there was no provision for it, and anybody who told you he (Tinubu) suspended it was just joking because how did he suspend payment that was not budgeted for in the first instance?
“There was no provision for subsidy in that budget and I am not aware of any amendment that took place to accommodate the payment of subsidy. The truth is that he (Tinubu) was not the one who removed the subsidy. But he did make that pronouncement.”
The Bauchi politician didn’t like how Nigerians comment on the country’s challenges.
He thinks everyone just talks about the problems without suggesting any solutions.
“The problem with this country is that people always want to talk about her problems and they want to leave Nigeria because of it as if these problems are not there in other climes.
But nobody is talking about solutions, even among the elites. When you sit with them, everyone is talking about the problems and not solutions,” he said.
He told Nigerians to just accept that fuel subsidy is gone, and said Tinubu couldn’t do anything about it because it wasn’t in the 2023 budget.