Peter Esele, a former President of the Trade Union Congress, TUC, said President Muhammad Buhari’s administration has the chance to remove the fuel subsidy but squandered it.
The former labour leader spoke on Channels Television programme, Sunrise Daily on Friday, saying the fuel subsidy regime had been allowed to drag for too long.
He said the new administration of Bola Tinubu which is expected to take power from the incumbent on May 29, should end the petrol subsidy ‘once and for all’.
Recall that the President-elect had during his campaign as the candidate of the ruling All progressives Congress, APC, said subsidy removal will be one of the policy thrust of his administration.
Esele’s comment came hours after the Buhari administration said it had pushed the decision on the whether to end the subsidy regime to the incoming administration.
Not a few Nigerians insist that Buhari is trying to create problem for the Tinubu government by shifting the decision to him to make.
The incumbent should have done that long time ago, considering the goodwill it had among Nigerians when it first came to power in 2015.
The organized labour has warned that the country will be set o fire if the subsidy is removed at this time, considering that a concrete plan has yet to be put in place by the government to cushion the effect of the removal.
Nigerians must not be made to suffer for the government’s intransigence on the subsidy issue, the labour said.
The federal government recently said it has earmarked $800 million to be distributed to poor Nigerians on a monthly basis, to cushion the effect on them when the subsidy is finally removed.
It’s not yet clear what will happen to the fund now that the government has decided to suspend the removal.
