After Meeting with Obasanjo, Abiodun Says Nation Must Endure Subsidy Removal Pain

James Sowole in Abeokuta

Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun, yesterday, after a closed door meeting with former President Olusegun Obasanjo at his resident in Abeokuta, the state capital, said the nation must endure the pains of fuel subsidy removal.

Abiodun arrived the private residence of Obasanjo, located within the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) at 11.58am and went straight into a private meeting with him.

Emerging from the meeting, which lasted about an hour, Abiodun declined to reveal  details of his meeting to journalists, describing it as private.

“It is a private meeting. A son does not have to have any particular reason to come and see his father, so, I have come to see our baba and it is a private meeting,” Abiodun said.

However, speaking on fuel subsidy removal, he lamented that, Nigeria lost N4trillion annually to the subsidy regime, insisting that there was no better time to remove the subsidy than now, assuring Nigerians that, the government would put the money into better use to revamp the economy of the country.

“We all know that the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration started with a bang. On 29th of May, he reeled off a few initiatives, one of the most laudable of those initiatives was his decision to remove subsidy on petroleum products.

“As controversial as that initiative has been, no one can deny the fact that it was a very welcome initiative. That was a subsidy that Nigeria could no longer afford, it was a subsidy that was not in the budget beyond June 2023.

“More importantly, it was costing Nigeria about N4trillion per annum, N4trillion that Nigeria did not have, that we have had to borrow, that could be better expended to other uses that the common man can feel, so it was a very right decision.

“Of course, it was a decision that also came with a bit of pain, but like they say, there is no gain without some pain,” Abiodun said, and urged Nigerians to endure the hardship of increasing fuel price, saying the benefits of the subsidy removal outweighed the pain.

The governor said, his administration had rolled also out a series of palliatives for civil servants, pensioners and the people of the state to cushion the effect of subsidy removal.

Part of palliatives included the approval for the payment of N10,000 cash for each public servants and pensioners in the state., as well as approval for payment of hazard allowance for all health and medical personnel in the state, adding that the implementation of the palliative would take effect from July.