The presidential candidate of the Action Democratic Congress (ADC) in the 2023 elections, Dumebi Kachikwu has said that former President Muhammadu Buhari handed a banana peel to his successor, President Bola Tinubu by leaving the removal of the fuel subsidy for him.
Kachikwu, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday, said the former president did not want to take responsibility for the fuel subsidy removal and instead pushed it to the incoming government.
Dumebi Kachikwu appeared on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday, June 5, 2023.
“Obviously the President was handed a banana peel by the outgoing President Buhari who failed to provide for subsidy beyond June when he was leaving office. He obviously did not want to deal with that and he pushed on that responsibility to the incoming government.
“We also understand that the Nigerian economy is in tatters, the government doesn’t have the funding and the NNPC is in the state of near comatose. They will crumble if they continue to fund subsidy, they are said to be owed over two trillion naira at the moment. President Tinubu just informed Nigerians of the situation he was meeting,” Kachikwu said.
The former presidential hopeful said that Nigerians knew there was no provision for subsidy beyond June but that they did not expect that any government would want to deal with it the way the present government did, adding that they expected a structured approach to deal with it.
On the Organised Labour’s threat of going on strike over the fuel subsidy removal, Kachikwu knocked the labour unions, saying that they knew that the government was going to remove subsidy and that all the presidential candidates had promised to do the same but never complained.
He called on the Federal Government to go after those abusing the subsidy system and also urged Tinubu to put immediate measures to cushion the impact of subsidy removal.
