A former minority whip of the House of Representatives, Dr Samson Osagie, has appealed to Nigerians to make sacrifices over fuel subsidy removal for the country to move forward.
Dr Osagie said after full deregulation President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration must be ready to demonstrate transparency and accountability to ensure the gains is felt by all Nigerians
Osagie, a lecturer at the National Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies and a political economist said it was unacceptable the blackmail by those who had continue benefited in the subsidy scam must stop.
He said former President Goodluck Jonathan was right when he made the bold step to end subsidy in 2012 but was shut down due to crass ignorance and political.
The former federal lawmaker in a paper he titled: “The Fuel Subsidy Conundrum: The Illegality and Blackmail,” insisted that it is absolutely needless for anybody to argued that the federal government should continue with the illegality at the expense of the already pauperised populace.”
“The discovery that the oil subsidy regime is not sustainable has been longstanding and successive governments have attempted to dare the consequences without success. Of remarkable significance was January 1st, 2012, when President Goodluck Jonathan courageously announced fuel subsidy removal but was resisted by Labor, the Civil Societies, opposition political parties and even the National Assembly.
“Indeed, it was the reason the House of Representatives called off its Christmas and new year recess and convened a sitting on Sunday,8th January, 2012, the very first time such could happen in the history of democratic Nigeria.
“As a member of the House of Representatives then, let me confess that the resistance to President Jonathan’s bold attempt was borne out of crass ignorance and politics. With the benefits of hindsight, I can say President Jonathan administration was right and we were all wrong.
“No responsible government that desires progress for its country and citizen will tolerate ad infinitum and there is abundance of evidence that Nigerians including all the political parties and their Presidential candidates in the last elections have accepted this. So, no one can or should play politics about the bogus consumer of our collective patrimony called fuel subsidy,” he said.
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