Immediate past Governor of Ekiti State, Mr. Kayode Fayemi, has apologised to former President Goodluck Jonathan regarding the ‘Occupy Nigeria’ nationwide protests that convulsed the country under his administration in 2012 after he announced an end to subsidy on petrol.
Mr. Fayemi stated that the nationwide demonstration, which eventually coerced the government into rescinding its subsidy decision, was a purely political gambit for himself and his colleagues in the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) and that the motivations behind the protests were not rooted in genuine policy disparities or ideological disagreement.
His words, “All political parties in the country agreed and they even put in their manifesto that subsidy must be removed.
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“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,” Mr. Fayemi said.
The former governor, who has recently taken the role of Visiting Professor at the newly-founded Western Delta University, was delivering the keynote address at a national dialogue organised to commemorate the 60th birthday of Udenta Udenta, the founding National Secretary of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), a political party which held sway in the 2000s and evolved to the Action Congress which later merged with others to become the ruling APC.
Mr. Fayemi, however, did not clarify whether he was speaking for himself or any of the groups that participated in the 2012 mass resistance against the unbearable cost of living that the removal of subsidy caused for Nigerians.