Group backs Tinubu on fuel subsidy removal

A pressure group under the aegis of ‘The Natives’ has thrown its weight behind the presidential candidate of All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, over his proposed plan to strike out the controversial fuel subsidy if elected as president.

In a statement issued to newsmen in Abuja on Saturday, the National Leader of The Natives, Smart Edwards, however, cautioned that they would hold Tinubu accountable right from the moment he assumed office until he fulfilled his promise.

The APC presidential candidate had on Thursday at a Business Luncheon in Lagos promised that his presidency would remove the subsidy even in the face of protest by the Nigerian workers.

“How can we be subsidising fuel consumption of Cameroon, of Niger, of Benin Republic? No matter how long you protest, we are going to remove subsidy,” he said emphatically.

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Reacting after an assessment parley with its regional commissioners known as the G-43, Edwards described the former Lagos governor’s resolution as a courageous warning to oil cartels.

The group, which has membership across the 774 local governments in the country, lamented that Nigeria was losing over N5trn to few cartels in the name of subsidy annually.

The statement partly read, “Take it or leave it, Nigerians need those oil subsidy funds allocated and released into other sectors. Remove it and stop the bleeding. How can we continue to condole the eating up of our national treasury in the name of subsidy; trillions of naira spent every year to subsidise what exactly?

“The humanitarian initiative of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari(retd.), has about N500bn as its budget, the Ministry of Youths has close to N80 billion for the nation’s entire youths, and that’s why many don’t get to benefit from government gestures. The country’s critical sectors don’t even enjoy a trillion in planning, so what are we doing?

“Our message to the presidential candidate of the APC, Tinubu, is that if he wins the forthcoming election and anytime he is ready as a President, we will stand by him, it is a bold statement he must keep and if he is elected, we will hold him accountable for this.

“We are citizens and what we want is development, infrastructure, growth in a secure country, not a group of people fleecing out our resources in the name of subsidy. The truth is subsidy must go.

“We, however, call on the Labour Unions, Civil Society Organisations and youngsters to prepare their minds and show understanding because removal of fuel subsidy is a policy long overdue, the sector is caged and must be unbundled. We cannot be offering cooperation to saboteurs to arbitrarily unleash untold hardship on us as citizens year in year out. This evil work by the saboteurs must come to an end.”