Former President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has said the fuel subsidy removed in June 2023 by President Bola Tinubu’s administration has come back due to inflation.

Obasanjo disclosed this in a recent interview with the Financial Times.

He faulted how Tinubu’s administration removed fuel subsidies.

According to him, the government should have put measures in place before the fuel subsidy removal.

“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done; not just wake up one morning and say you removed the subsidy. Because of inflation, the subsidy that we have removed is not gone. It has come back. You have to go from transactional economy to transformational economy,” the former President stressed.

His remark comes amid the ongoing “hunger protests” in many states.

The protests, which commenced on Thursday, entered Day 5 on Monday with a major demand for the return of the fuel subsidy regime.

However, President Tinubu in his Sunday broadcast while appealing to protesters to suspend demonstrations, said his administration’s decision to remove fuel subsidy is painful but necessary.