The immediate past governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, says the protest that greeted the removal of fuel subsidy by the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2012 was politically motivated.
TheHintsNews reports that on January 1, 2012, Jonathan announced the removal of fuel subsidy.
Consequently, he adjusted the pump price of petrol from N65 per litre to N141 in a move that sparked mass protests, known as ‘Occupy Nigeria’ across the country.
Following backlash from leaders of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), who are now mostly in the All Progressives Congress (APC), the price was later adjusted to N97 after more than a week of protests. It was further reduced to N87 in 2015.
However, while delivering a keynote address at a national dialogue organised to celebrate the 60th birthday of the founding National Secretary of Alliance for Democracy (AD), Professor Udenta Udenta, on Tuesday in Abuja, Fayemi admitted that the protest was purely politics.
His words: “All political parties in the country agreed and they even put in their manifesto that subsidy must be removed. We all said subsidy must be removed.
“But we in ACN at the time in 2012, we know the truth sir but it is all politics. That is why we must ensure that everybody is a crucial stakeholder by stopping all these.
“Let the manifesto of PDP, APC, Labour Party be put on the table and select all those who will pilot the programme from all parties.”
Fayemi noted that the challenges confronting the nation today cannot be solved unless the country embraces proportional representation where the spoils of elections are shared between contestants.
He admitted that the last time Nigeria experienced economic development was during Jonathan’s administration.
Fayemi added: “Today, I read former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s interview in TheCable saying our liberal democracy is not working and we need to revisit it. And I agree with him, we must move from political alternative, I think we are almost on a dead end of that.”
“What we need is alternative politics and my own notion of alternative politics is that you can’t have 35 per cent of the vote and take 100 per cent. It won’t work. We must look at proportional representation so that the party that is said to have one 21 per cent of the vote will have 21 per cent of the government. Adversary politics bring division and enmity.”