Tinubu’s Fuel Subsidy Removal Was Unnecessary – Solomon Dalung

Bola Tinubu

Former Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Solomon Dalung, has blasted President Bola Tinubu’s decision to remove fuel subsidy. He recently made the remarks during an interview on Channels Television on Thursday, and Nigerians have been reacting.

According to him, the decision was taken without consultation and adequate understanding of government processes, and the government’s justification for the policy reflects a poverty of ideas and knowledge.

Dalung added that fuel subsidy removal was clearly not necessary at the time it was announced.

His words, “The admission that subsidy removal was the only option is a demonstration of poverty of ideas and knowledge because in life, there are too many alternatives. For them to single out this issue defines the vested interest in the withdrawal of fuel subsidy.

I don’t see it as something that was necessary at that point in time. If we know as a fact that the subsidy regime has been investigated by the National Assembly, the fraud had been established, companies were indicted, meaning that the problem is not even the withdrawal of subsidy but the subsidy management itself.

This government is not interested in holding those who have defrauded this country for many years but chose to make a sweeping statement, ‘subsidy has been withdrawn’. For me, it is an endorsement of fraud.

Granted, it has been done, but it was done in a manner that demonstrated again that the President, as at that time, did not even understand the working of the government and the complex nature of the country called Nigeria.

He needed consultation. As at that time he made the statement, there was no government. It was only the President and the Vice President that had been sworn in, and that wasn’t government.

A government means a cabinet, advisers, and policy makers taking a decision like that.”

WOW.