Former President Muhammadu Buhari is to blame for the suffering that Nigerians are currently going through due to the removal of fuel subsidies, according to Chief Bisi Akande, an elder statesman and prominent member of the All Progressives Congress (APC). He claims that from the start, Buhari’s economic policies were out of his grasp.
The former Osun State governor Akande stated that Buhari ought to have eliminated fuel subsidies when he was first elected president in 2015, arguing that by then, Nigerians would have conquered the difficulties related to doing away with subsidies.
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“And I kept saying it but as part of the administration, I couldn’t go to the press to say it. It would have been senseless because Buhari never closed the door of his house to me. I can meet and talk to him whenever I want.”
“And I was saying that I wasn’t comfortable with economic management. Let’s use, for example, the removal of fuel subsidy, between the time Buhari was elected as President and the time he was inaugurated, we had several sessions of discussion to see if the subsidy should be removed and he was convinced.
“And I thought that as soon as he got to power he would removed the subsidy but I didn’t know what happened. And after his inauguration he started being careful, slowing down until the first four years.
“So, at the beginning of the term, he came out, he wanted to remove the subsidy and the country reacted and he had to back out. So from the beginning I wasn’t comfortable. Subsidy ought to have been removed at that time and by now Nigerians should have been used to it.”
