Lanre Issa-Onilu, the Director-General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), urged Nigerians on Wednesday to devise survival strategies amidst the economic challenges following the removal of the petrol subsidy by President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
Issa-Onilu, formerly the spokesperson for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), cautioned that reinstating the petrol subsidy, as demanded by #EndBadGovernance protesters, would exacerbate poverty rather than alleviate it.
“Anybody who is making a demand that subsidy removal should be brought back is making an emotional demand, not an economic demand because you have to also prove that if it is brought back, it will solve the issue of poverty; it will not, it will aggravate it,” Issa-Onilu said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily breakfast show.
“So, what we should be doing is: How do we survive in spite of the removal? We need to promote all the efforts of this government to ensure that we survive without that subsidy.”
He acknowledged the significant trust gap between Nigerian leaders and citizens due to years of unfulfilled promises.
Issa-Onilu said to information managers, “It is difficult to talk to a people who have for several years been let down. Nigerians feel let down.
The first question they ask you is: ‘Is this another promise that will not be kept?’ So, we must prove to Nigerians that this government is keeping to its promises.”
On May 29, 2023, President Tinubu announced the end of the fuel subsidy during his inaugural address.
This decision caused petrol prices to rise from approximately N200 to over N600 per litre, which now sells at 900 at filling stations, intensifying Nigeria’s economic crisis and pushing millions into severe hardship.
In a nationwide address on Sunday, President Tinubu reiterated his stance against the subsidy, dismissing its return as an economic relief measure.
He stated that the subsidy removal was a painful but necessary step for economic reform, despite ongoing nationwide protests by young Nigerians demanding the return of petrol and electricity subsidies.
