The Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, HE Peter Obi has said that his support for the removal of subsidy paid on petroleum products is true but with a condition that should be empirical to the people.
Obi who was ambushed by judicial correspondents as he attended his ongoing election petition case at the Court of Appeal headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday, said that his support for subsidy removal dates back to the Goodluck Jonathan era when he was a member of the Presidential Economic Management Team.
“If you have followed me very well right from the time I was a member of Jonathan’s economic management team, I consistently maintained that subsidy should be removed because I see it as organized crime. People were just stealing the resources of the country and I showed empirically in my statistical analysis that we are not consuming the amount of fuel they claim we consume.”
The former Anambra State governor differentiated his idea of subsidy removal from what is happening in the country now that they are linking him to the two options available to a person having a toothache.
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He said, “If you approach a dentist to remove a painful tooth, he will apply a local anesthetic to numb the area around the tooth so you do not feel pain. It’s not the same thing as pulling the tooth forcefully, the pain you feel will be different.
“For me, I will go with the approach of the dentist while supporting the removal of the tooth because I wouldn’t want to go through the pain of forceful removal.
“Recall that even when Jonathan wanted to remove it, they came up with various relieving policies like Sure-P and others.
“If you read my manifesto, you will see clearly how I planned to remove subsidy, I will govern with the people and show them statistically and empirically what we are getting and how we are deploying it.
“The problem in Nigeria is that when people say let’s go and suffer, let’s go and sacrifice, they don’t see the results of their suffering and their sacrifice,” he concluded.
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