Ogun state governor, Dapo Abiodun on Tuesday, held a closed-door meeting with former President Olusegun Obasanjo at his residence in Abeokuta, the state capital.
Abiodun who arrived at the private residence of Obasanjo, located within the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library at 11.58 am, went straight into a private meeting with him.
While emerging from the meeting that lasted for about an hour, Abiodun described it as a private meeting.
He said,
“It is a private meeting. A son does not have to have any particular reason to come and see his father, so I have come to see our baba and it is a private meeting.”
Speaking on fuel subsidy removal, Abiodun, lamented that, Nigeria lost N4 trillion annually to the subsidy regime.
According to him, there is no better time to remove the subsidy than now.
He urged Nigerians to endure the hardship of increasing fuel prices, saying the benefits of the subsidy removal outweigh the pain.
He assured Nigerians that, the government would put to better use to revamp the economy of the country.
Abiodun said,
“We all know that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration started with a bang. On the 29th of May, he reeled out a few initiatives, one of the most laudable of those initiatives was his decision to remove subsidy on petroleum products.
“As controversial as that initiative has been, no one can deny the fact that it was a very welcome initiative. That was a subsidy that Nigeria could no longer afford, it was a subsidy that was not in the budget beyond June 2023.
“More importantly, it was costing Nigeria about N4trillion per annum, N4trillion that Nigeria did not have, that we have had to borrow, that could be better expended to other uses that the common man can feel, so it was a very right decision.
“Of course, it was a decision that also came with a bit of pain, but as they say, there is no gain without some pain.”
