Dr. Kayode Fayemi, a former governor of Ekiti State, claimed on Tuesday that political interests were to blame for the demonstration that followed the elimination of fuel subsidies in 2012 under President Goodluck Jonathan’s government.
Fayemi made this statement in his keynote speech at a national forum held in Abuja to honour Professor Udenta Udenta, the founding National Secretary of the Alliance for Democracy and Fellow of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, who turned 60 years old.
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Jonathan, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, a former minister of education, and Osita Chidoka, a former minister of aviation, were among those present at the event.
On January 1, 2012, President Goodluck announced the removal of fuel subsidy and adjusted the pump price of petrol from N65 per litre to N141.
The decision sparked mass protests, tagged ‘Occupy Nigeria’ across major cities of the country.
The price was later re-adjusted to N97, after more than a week of protests.
Petrol price was later reduced to N87 in 2015.
The All Progressives Congress leaders who were then in various opposition parties, such as the now-defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, Congress for Progressives Congress, All Nigeria Peoples Party, and All Progressive Grand Alliance, were particularly critical of Jonathan for the fuel price adjustment.
Fayemi criticised Nigeria’s democracy, calling it a “winners take all” system, and asserted that the country cannot overcome its current problems unless it adopts proportional representation, in which the winners and losers of elections divide the spoils equally.
He claimed that Nigeria’s most recent period of economic growth occurred during the leadership of Goodluck Jonathan.
Fayemi said, “Today, I read former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s interview in The Cable saying our liberal democracy is not working and we need to revisit it, and I agree with him. We must move from the political alternatives. 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 won 21 per cent of the votes will have 21 per cent of the government. Adversary politics bring division and enmity.
“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 and Labour Party, be put on the table and select all those who will pilot the programme from all parties.”
