Ahead of the 2023 presidential election, the Peoples Democratic Party queried the manifesto of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Tinubu had stated that he would fully deregulate the downstream, sparking anxiety that this may lead to a hike in fuel prices and inflation.
Reacting to this, the PDP queried how the APC intend to do this without causing much hardship to the people.
The regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has been paying subsidies since 2015 and it has also allocated N3.6tn in the 2023 budget to fund the fuel subsidy for the first half of next year.
According to The PUNCH, the spokesman of the PDP Presidential Campaign Council, Daniel Bwala stated that the ruling party and its candidate should clarify how they planned to deregulate the downstream sector without sparking inflation and hardship on the people.
“The APC and their candidate must clarify how they want to achieve this. It is their duty to provide this clarification,” he stated.
Kola Ologbondiyan, another spokesman, challenged Tinubu to move away from general models and toward models with specific solutions for how he planned to fix the troubled oil sector. He pointed out that Tinubu’s plan didn’t say whether he would raise the price per litre of PMS or privatize the sector to reach his goal.
“Atiku Abubakar has promised a phased withdrawal of subsidy in a manner that will not put absurd pressure on the economic life of Nigerians,” he added.
