Nigerians express concern over immediate subsidy removal

Nigerians have expressed concern over the implementation of subsidy removal in spite of President Bola Tinubu’s assurance that it would not take effect immediately.

A cross-section of residents of Ibadan, Oyo State, expressed their feelings on Wednesday in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan.

Supreme reports that the majority of filling stations in Ibadan have started selling petrol at $500 per liter, the new official price released by the NNPC.

However, queues had disappeared from many of the filling stations compared to what occurred on Tuesday.

Commenting, an entrepreneur, Mr. Tobi Adeyemi, said the development was not a good one.

According to Adeyemi, the new administration should have provided some sort of respite for Nigerians, considering the enormous hardship being faced by Nigerians.

“This will definitely affect the prices of goods and services, from tomato sellers to foodstuffs; transportation; an increase in fuel prices; and so on.

“We will all bear the brunt of it together. I only pity salary earners who are on a fixed income. Besides, I don’t believe this is the right timing,” Adeyemi said.

Also, a sales representative, Dr. Adeyinka Adekunle, said the previous administration had budgeted for subsidies until the end of June.

“So, to me, it was shocking to learn that the removal had taken effect on May 31 based on what the previous administration had done.

“Everything is sort of confusing now because of the budgetary provision for subsidy until June's end,” Adekunle said.

He, however, said a nation that was going to be great had to go through some teething periods.

In his remarks, an artisan, Mr. Akinola Akinkunmi, said he has yet to comprehend the situation because things were already hard and buying fuel at N500 per liter now would worsen the situation.

Akinkunmi said, “I cannot yet wrap my mind around how my business will survive; we are already struggling to make ends meet.

“With this development and the absence of power supply from the distributing company, we are definitely going further down the poverty line.

“We need support for the government; we need help to survive this time,” Akinkunmi said.

Another entrepreneur, Mr. Demola Adedeji, said the timing was not right as the economy had been in bad shape for some time now.

“At least some things should have been put in place before the total removal of subsidies,” Adedeji said.

In his contributions, Mr. Yinka Ajadi, a businessman, said that many people would go into depression as the blood pressure of many Nigerians struggling to survive the situation would rise.

Ajadi said, “We can only hope for critical intervention at this time, such as solving problems of power and production inputs.”