The Presidency has accused Nigerians of a ‘lack of memory’ of the country’s recent past as criticisms continue to mount over the state of the economy under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Speaking with journalists on Saturday morning, Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to the President, defended the government’s performance and insisted that many of the issues being blamed on the current administration were inherited.
“Many Nigerians… we sometimes exhibit the problem of lack of memory. We have very short memory, we forget where we started from and we just start blaming President Tinubu for all the problems that Nigeria is going through. In 2023, when Tinubu took over the government, there were fuel shortages in this country,” Onanuga said.
Citing fuel scarcity during the 2023 general election period, he reminded citizens that the fuel crisis predated the President’s decision to eliminate subsidy payments.
“I remember, for instance, in May 2023, when Tinubu took over the government, there was fuel shortage in this country. If we forgot that all through the election that year, there was fuel shortage,” he stressed.
He further explained that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), which had been the major supplier of fuel, had to raise pump prices immediately after the subsidy removal due to massive debts and inability to import fuel.
“NNPC was saying the federal government was owing it over 4 trillion Naira, and it was also owing its suppliers abroad. So what the federal government did, what President Tinubu did, was to bring some life into NNPC… so that fuel can be available. People forget that easily,” he added.
Onanuga defended the decision to remove fuel subsidy, saying it was unsustainable and a financial burden on future generations.
“There was no way Nigeria could have sustained the regime of fuel subsidy. No way, because the resources are just not there, and we are just spending the money they ought to belong to the future generation. So the government just had to do the right thing,” he said.
“Yeah, problems followed. What the President did… this government has been honest in admitting some of the problems, some of the fallouts… of the consequence of removing fuel subsidy, and has been doing… a lot of measures to ameliorate the pains of Nigerians,” he added.
President Tinubu marked two years in office on Thursday.
