The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the February 23, 2023, presidential election, Peter Obi, has canvassed what he called a dentist’s approach to the removal of petrol subsidy.
He said although he had always supported the removal, the process had to follow the approach of the dentists who wants to remove a bad tooth.
In a tweet on Tuesday, he said: “If you approach a dentist to remove a painful tooth, he will apply a local anaesthetic to numb the area around the tooth so you do not feel pain. It’s not the same thing as pulling the tooth forcefully; the pain you feel will be different.
“For me, I will go with the approach of the dentist, while supporting the removal of the tooth because I wouldn’t want to go through the pain of a forceful removal.
“I’ve actually been in support of the removal of subsidies right from the President Goodluck Jonathan era when I was a member of the Economic Management Team.
“If you have followed me very well, right from the time I was a member of Jonathan’s economic management team, I consistently maintained that subsidy should be removed because I see it as organised crime.
“People were just stealing the resources of the country and I showed it empirically in my statistical analysis that we were not consuming the amount of fuel they claimed we consumed.”
Referring to his manifesto on how he planned to remove subsidies, he said, “I will govern with the people and show them statistically and empirically what we are going to save, and what we are going to do using the savings to better the suffering masses.”
