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Former LP scribe berates APC, Tinubu for calling for fuel subsidy removal

By Seye Olumide
22 December 2015   |   2:17 am
IMMEDIATE past National Secretary of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Kayode Ajulo, has berated the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and National Leader of the party, Senator Bola Tinubu, over call for removal of fuel subsidy.
Ajulo

Ajulo

It will further pauperise Nigerians, says OPC
IMMEDIATE past National Secretary of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Kayode Ajulo, has berated the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and National Leader of the party, Senator Bola Tinubu, over call for removal of fuel subsidy.

Also, the National Coordinator of Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), Otunba Gani Adams, has faulted the call for fuel subsidy removal by Tinubu.

Adams, in a statement yesterday said such call is coming at this time when Nigerians are suffering untold hardship as a result of the downturn in global economy, adding that the proposal was both shocking and disappointing.

Ajulo posited that the insistence by Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State that President Muhammadu Buhari must remove fuel subsidy by January 2016 “is quite unfortunate in many respects, it is another misadventure of the National Leader of APC and his party.”

In a statement yesterday, Ajulo said Tinubu’s position “smacks of lack of sense of history, betrayal of the common people and utter disservice to the memory of the late Professor Bala Usman, on whose 10th anniversary of death he chose to make such flagrant insensitive postulation.”

According to him, “Bala Usman was a teacher of the youth, students, peasants and the working class. He was a vehement anti-fuel subsidy removal agitator. He was very clear in his enunciation that Nigeria as an oil producing country could not sell petroleum products to Nigerians at the so-called global market price.”

According to the OPC leader, “It is particularly disturbing that such call was made by a leader of the APC, a party whose leaders were in the forefront of a protest that shook the nation when former President Goodluck Jonathan increased fuel price to N97 per liter in January 2012.

“As we speak, more than 15 states are unable to pay their workers as a result of the shortfall in the nation’s earnings. Without doubt, the removal of fuel subsidy, which in truth is about the only thing the citizens enjoy from the government, will inflict more hardship on hapless Nigerians.”

The OPC national coordinator warned that any increase in the price of fuel via the removal of subsidy will definitely lead to increase in the prices of food stuff, while transport fares will shoot up, leaving civil servants who are already suffering from the shortfall in government allocations to suffer more.

Adams, however, suggested that rather than attempt to remove subsidy “the government should focus its attention on efforts to put our refineries in good shape. It is a shame that at this age of our national life, Nigeria takes her crude oil to smaller countries like Equatorial Guinea to refine and later bring it back into the country as imported fuel.
“Nigerians cannot continue to take the same old story by government that it cannot continue to subsidise the price of fuel, when we all know that this is the only little benefit that Nigerians enjoy.”

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