Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland Gani Adams Slams Tinubu’s Policies, Condemns Fuel Costs, Economic Hardships

Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, Gani Adams, has publicly criticized President Bola Tinubu’s policies, specifically condemning the rising fuel costs and economic hardships experienced by Nigerians under his administration.

Illustrating the dire consequences of the fuel price surge in a statement, the Aare noted that a single round trip between Lagos and Ibadan in one vehicle could cost an astronomical N250,000 in fuel expenses.

“Now, if I want to go to Ibadan with one vehicle like a jeep, going to Ibadan to and fro, I will spend nothing less than N250,000 to fuel my tank. That’s just on one vehicle and people like me, I always travel with four or five vehicles. Where would I get such money, and you want me to keep quiet because I am a Yoruba man? So you are telling me that going to Ibadan, just Ibadan here, which is about 120 or 140kms distance, I would be spending about N1million to buy fuel? If I go with six vehicles, that would be N1.5million”, he stated.

Last week, a groundswell of condemnations trailed the latest increase in the pump price of premium motor spirit (petrol) as announced by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) two weeks ago, with analysts saying Nigerians have indeed reached the breaking point.

Although this administration has courted public anger many times with its anti-people policies, this time, it stirred up a hornets’ nest when the NNPCL raised the pump price of petrol to over N855 across its retail outlets amid long queues at filling stations but sold above N1,000 per litre in other stations. And characteristic of the government’s tactics in times of crisis, the Minister of State (Oil) Petroleum Resources, Heineken Lokpobiri said the federal government was not responsible for the recent petrol price increase across the country.

Nigerians woke up on Tuesday to see a change in the pump prices from around N600 to N855/litre, N918/litre, and above, depending on the area of the purchase at NNPC stations nationwide. As expected, prices of goods and services jumped in an unprecedented manner, thus worsening the state of poverty in the country. This increase was felt in the transport sector, particularly in goods and services costs.

While Lokpobiri and NNPCL were busy playing with words on the latest petrol price hike and saying it was all about market forces, President BolaTinubu was saying in faraway China that the increase was because he had to take “hard decisions” for the sake of Nigeria’s development. 

In a statement, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) alleged that the federal government had undertaken, during the N70,000 minimum wage deal with organised labour, not to approve further hikes in the price of petrol. It called the recent price hike a betrayal by the government.

But the presidency denied making any undertaking not to increase fuel prices. The drama, however, took a new turn with the arrest of the NLC President Joe Ajaero on Monday morning. He was released later after the NLC threatened to shut down the nation’s economy.