The Executive Director of Social Economic and Civic Right Advocacy (SECRA), Comrade Olowu Emmanuel has faulted President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s removal of fuel subsidy, describing it as not properly planned despite inheriting six months of arrears paid by the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

Speaking on Friday during a program titled “Issues that matter” on City Mirror TV, Osogbo, he said Nigerians had suffered persistent fuel price hikes since the pronouncement.

According to him, the government failed to prepare alternatives before scrapping the subsidy.

“The government has not helped or supported its people to live a comfortable life.

“The government has concentrated on what is going to bring joy to itself and not the Nigerian people. The problem is that those who are advising Mr President aren’t doing it so well,” he stated.

Olowu said the situation would have been different if Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) infrastructure had been rolled out immediately after removal.

He also noted that CNG buses and charging stations in Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt should have been prioritised.

Instead, he lamented, “those that are handling every one of these problems, they are private establishments.”

On long-term solutions, he insisted other sectors needed attention.

“The educational structure, the currency ‘naira’ has to be stronger,” he added.

He questioned Nigeria’s technical capacity to fix the oil sector, pointing out that graduates of petrochemicals “had nothing to show for it.”

The country, he said, lacked “the technical know-how of solving the issues facing the oil industry.

“We have to build a gradual process that is going to take us to our promised land,” he stated.

To achieve that, he called for new curricula in technical colleges to train youths in CNG technology and expand capacity to every local government.

He also faulted Nigeria’s heavy reliance on imports.

“We import everything we use, we can’t continue like that and think the naira would be stronger,” he said.

Comrade Olowu argued that political will was the missing factor.

“There’s no policy that cannot be effective if the government is serious,” he said, citing the COVID-19 24-hour curfew and Awolowo’s 1954 free education policy as examples.

He criticised governance since 1999, saying the system had “only made policies that have enhanced the lifestyles of the rich, elites and not the common man.”

On the oil sector, he demanded transparency from the NNPC over Nigeria’s four failed refineries and called for “prosecution of those who work against it.”

Looking ahead to elections, he described them as the real opportunity for change.

“The day of revolution can only be an election, when it’s our turn to choose rightly, let us not collect any money from any politician. Vote rightly and let your conscience work,” he said.