On Wednesday, August 7, the Director-General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Lanre Issa-Onilu, encouraged Nigerians to develop survival strategies in light of the economic impact following the removal of the petrol subsidy by President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
Issa-Onilu, who previously served as the spokesman for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), emphasized that reinstating the petrol subsidy, as demanded by the #EndBadGovernance protesters over the past week, would worsen poverty rather than alleviate it.
“Anybody who is making a demand that subsidy removal should be brought back is making an emotional demand, not an economic demand because you have to also prove that if it is brought back, it will solve the issue of poverty; it will not, it will aggravate it,” Issa-Onilu stated during an appearance on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily breakfast show.
He urged Nigerians to focus on adapting to the new economic reality, saying, “So, what we should be doing is: How do we survive in spite of the removal? We need to promote all the efforts of this government to ensure that we survive without that subsidy.”