Presidential Aide Faults Peter Obi’s Remarks on Fuel Price Hike

The Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Social Media, Dada Olusegun, has criticised the Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, over his comments on the recent increase in fuel prices in Nigeria.

Olusegun, in a post on X on Saturday, described Obi’s remarks as wrong and embarrassing, urging him to stop commenting on issues he does not fully understand.

The response followed a statement by Obi on Thursday, where he attributed Nigeria’s vulnerability to global oil price shocks to the absence of a strategic petroleum reserve and lack of government planning.

Obi had noted that petrol, which sold for less than N1,000 per litre weeks ago, had risen to over N1,200 per litre, while diesel climbed from below N1,000 to over N1,500 per litre. He linked the increases to global tensions involving Iran and their effect on oil prices.

He argued that most countries maintain strategic petroleum reserves to cushion against supply or price shocks, adding that Nigeria lacks such a buffer, making the impact of global disruptions immediate.

“The underlying issue is a lack of planning. Countries that engage in planning create buffers against shocks, while those that do not remain vulnerable to them,” Obi had said.

But Olusegun countered, stating that the immediate driver of rising pump prices is the deregulation of the fuel market following the removal of subsidy by the Tinubu administration, not the absence of a strategic reserve.

“In a deregulated system, petrol prices respond directly to global oil prices, exchange rates, shipping costs, and supply risks. So when geopolitical tensions involving Iran push global oil prices upward, countries that rely heavily on imported refined products like Nigeria will inevitably feel the effect at the pump,” he explained.

He also challenged Obi’s characterisation of strategic petroleum reserves, noting that even countries with large reserves like the United States and China maintain them primarily for supply emergencies such as wars or major disruptions, not for controlling routine market price movements.

Olusegun acknowledged that Nigeria faces structural challenges, including limited refining capacity and heavy dependence on imported refined products despite being a major crude oil producer. He said this imbalance, combined with exchange rate pressures, makes the country vulnerable to global price movements.

He argued that reducing the issue to a failure of planning around strategic reserves misses the broader reality, stressing that real planning would involve expanding domestic refining capacity, strengthening supply chains, and stabilising the foreign exchange environment.

Olusegun also reminded Obi that during his presidential campaign, he publicly pledged to remove fuel subsidy if elected.

“It is worth reminding you that during your presidential campaign, you clearly stated that you would remove fuel subsidy if elected. So the same policy framework that now allows prices to reflect market realities is one you publicly supported,” he said.

He further questioned Obi’s grasp of the subject, describing it as embarrassing for a former governor to make sweeping conclusions about a complex global energy market.

“A former governor should know better than to reduce a multi-layered economic issue to a simplistic talking point,” Olusegun added.

He urged Obi to refrain from commenting on issues he does not fully understand, saying the former governor had made a habit of maligning Nigeria.

“Sometimes the wiser thing to do is simply sit a conversation out when one does not fully understand how the system works rather than jumping at every opportunity to malign Nigeria,” he said.