Presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Obi, has thrown his weight behind the removal of fuel subsidy, saying the policy itself is not the problem but the alleged mismanagement of the resources saved from it.
Obi stated this on Monday at the ongoing 66th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, where political leaders and presidential contenders are debating key issues ahead of the 2027 general elections.
“I subscribe and maintain that you need to remove subsidy. Mismanagement of the proceeds shouldn’t be the reason for not removing it,” Obi said.
The former Anambra State governor argued that the removal should have been accompanied by clear alternatives and deliberate measures to cushion its impact on Nigerians.
According to him, the resources recovered from subsidy removal should have been channelled into critical sectors such as healthcare, education and other areas capable of improving the living standards of citizens.
Obi said the Federal Government had claimed to have saved about N16 trillion from subsidy removal, arguing that a fraction of the amount could have been deployed to transform primary healthcare across the country.
“Assuming, let me use five percent, you said that they saved N15.8 trillion. So, according to them, N16 trillion. Five percent of that is just about N800 billion,” he said.
He proposed that the funds could be used to establish functional primary healthcare centres in every ward, stressing that the key issue was not whether subsidy should be removed but how the resulting savings were managed.
“What we have today is that the removal and the attendant resources being recovered is also being mismanaged and stolen,” Obi alleged.
His position comes amid renewed debate over the policy ahead of the 2027 presidential election, following former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar’s recent pledge to restore fuel subsidy if elected president.
Obi, however, maintained that reversing the policy because of alleged mismanagement would amount to addressing the wrong problem, insisting that the savings should instead be transparently and productively invested for the benefit of Nigerians.
The subsidy debate also featured prominently at the NBA conference, where African Action Congress presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore challenged politicians who previously supported subsidy removal, accusing them of failing Nigerians.
