TUC, SDP Presidential Candidate Differ On Fuel Subsidy Removal

President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Festus Osifo, and the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Adewale Adebayo, have expressed different views on the removal of fuel subsidy by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

They spoke last night on the policy on the Channels Television programme, Politics Today.

Osifo faulted Tinubu on the subsidy removal and lamented that petrol now sells for N1,000 per litre in some parts of the country following the announcement.

He said Nigerian workers were surprised to receive the news because they were having conversation with the previous government but because of the election it was put on hold, adding that at the end of the day they said it would be done unilaterally but “we said no we cannot do this unilaterally because there are a lot of issues that must be unravelled.”

He said “ if you listened to President Tinubu in his pre-inauguration speech, he said that is not going to dictate to Nigerians. But the question is whether the consultation was done? And the answer is clearly no.

“Before you go into such sensitive issues and areas, you need to have those conversations at least there should be discussion around you and that discussion for us is the key because we represent the Nigerian workers and indeed the entire Nigerian masses. So, both NLC and TUC, we represent these people, so the government should engage us,” Osifo said.

On his part, Adebayo described Tinubu’s announcement as untidy and ill-timed.

While stressing it might be too early to criticise him, Adebayo said Tinubu should be reminded that the occasion of his inaugural speech was not the best avenue to have announced the suspension of such a macroeconomic policy.

He said what the president had done was to state that the policy is under the law.

He said, “Never mind what the argument like the gentleman in the labour has said, he is taking us back to the past. There are two laws of the land; Petroleum Industry Act, Appropriation Act 2023, say that subsidy is not lawful anymore and TUC and NLC were around when the presidential candidates were campaigning for the removal of fuel subsidy and it was only the SDP candidate that said we would not remove subsidy but we would rather remove the corruption in the subsidy, but every other presidential candidate including the president clearly stated that the subsidy had to go in their manifestoes.

“If you look at the majority of voters, they voted r willingly for the political party that said he would remove the subsidy. APC got the highest votes followed by PDP, then Labour Party. I was the only person that wanted the subsidy to stay.

“My disagreement with the president is that you are coming into the office and the next thing is that you announced the removal of the subsidy. What people will understand is that the policy Buhari left behind which says that subsidy will go by the end of June, 2023 and people are expecting you to come in and put palliatives and other things between now and the expiring date of that law. So, announcing the removal of fuel subsidy will make people assume that by the time they wake up next morning the fuel price will go up.”