Tinubu's fierce attack on Jonathan’s petrol subsidy cut comes round to haunt him

Senior opposition politicians including Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar have attacked the recent deregulation of petrol price calling it an enslavement of Nigerians.

Their push against the policy which has resulted in higher petrol cost are a playback of the bruising attack that Bola Tinubu as opposition figure mounted against then President Goodluck Jonathan in 2012.

Jonathan had sought to deregulate fuel price then but had to backtrack after opposition figures like Tinubu rallied Labour to quash the plan.

In his statement titled, ‘Removal of oil subsidy: President Jonathan breaks social contract with the people’, Tinubu noted that with the subsidy removal, the people would become “enslaved to greater misery.”

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Tinubu’s statement read partly: “By taking this step, the government has tossed the people into the depths of the midnight sea. Government demands the people swim to safety under their own power, claiming the attendant hardship will build character and add efficiency to the national economy.

“It is easy to make these claims when one is dry and on shore. Government would have us believe that every hardship it manufactures for the people to endure is a good thing. This is a lie. The hardships they thrust upon the poor often bear no other purpose than to keep them poor. This is such a time.

“I am not calling President Jonathan an evil man. I do not believe he is perverse. However, the economic ideas controlling him are so misguided that they have a perverse impact. Because he is slave to wrong-headed economics, the people will become enslaved to greater misery. This crisis will bear his name and will be his legacy.

“The people now pay a steep tax for voting him into office. The removal of the subsidy is the ‘Jonathan tax.’ This situation shows that ideas count more than personalities. People may occupy office but how that person performs depends on the ideas that occupy his mind.”