Peter Obi’s presidency will tackle Nigeria’s fuel subsidy regime in the first 100 days if elected and redeploy the funds to key areas.
This was the Labour Party (LP)’s vice presidential candidate Yusuf Baba-Ahmed’s promise when he was featured on Channels Television’s election show The 2023 Verdict.
Despite being a major oil exporter, Nigeria imports the bulk of its petrol and a subsidy keeps the prices at the pump low for consumers. While popular with Nigerians, the subsidy is costly, with the price tag estimated at $9 billion last year.
But Obi’s running mate said their government will end it if elected later in the month though the current administration set a mid-2023 date to abolish it.
“In the first 100 days, by the time we sort out the problem of the subsidy scam, and we are able to deploy Nigeria’s wasted funds into education and healthcare, you would begin to feel it [the impact],” he said Tuesday.
The LP chieftain also promised that the Obi presidency will reduce the cost of governance and plow the money back into developmental projects.
“You would see that the money that Nigeria has is delivering more – infrastructure, security, public service, health, education, and everything,” he added.
“From day one, we are announcing that we are removing personal, political, and group interests from Nigerian financial affairs. That delivers more. That more than multiplies what is delivered to Nigerians.”
‘Pulled a Lot of Weight’
While several analysts said the LP does not command a huge following in northern Nigeria, he said the party is doing well in that region.
“We have pulled a lot of weight beyond the comprehension of the two runners-up,” he maintained.
According to him, no party will inherit President Muhammadu Buhari’s bloc votes going into the poll.
“The northern Nigerian votes that were waiting to make up the difference which either of the two other runners-up was hoping to get, [it] turned out that they are not getting it,” Obi’s running mate said.
“The heavy punchers – Kano, for example – is now a watershed of what its votes used to be. In 2015, the 1.9 million votes of Kano, nobody can aspire to have that which of course Buhari punched Jonathan with the final blow. Nobody is going to get that in Kano.”
