Former President Muhammadu Buhari has credited his successor Bola Ahmed Tinubu with jacking up the petrol pump price while being inaugurated on May 29, 2023.
Tinubu defenders had often said he followed the template already laid out by Buhari to end the fuel subsidy regime.
However, Buhari expressed happiness that the high cost of fuel succeeded in reducing the number of would-be visitors to his country home in Daura Emirate of Katsina State.
The two-time Nigerian leader spoke on Sunday as the Special Guest of Honour at the Maiden Edition of the Annual Katsina Dialogue organised by the Katsina Consultative Forum and held at the Presidential Banquet Hall of the Katsina Government House in the state capital.
However, speaking in Hausa, Buhari said that Tinubu increasing the price of fuel brought him joy because it reduced expected visitors to his Daura abode, although some determined ones still contributed money to fuel their vehicles to pay homage to him.
He said: “I’ve seen the good and bad side of Nigeria; I thanked God I have now settled at home and people are coming to pay homage daily.
“I was happy when Tinubu increased the petrol pump price, thinking that will reduce the number of people visiting me at home, but they later resorted to organising themselves to raise funds to barge into my house.”
Tinubu, at his inaugural address, announced that the decades-long subsidy on petroleum products was being scrapped.
“Fuel subsidy is gone,” he told a packed crowd in the capital, Abuja.
Ending the subsidy immediately triggered a rise in the price of petrol and ricocheted on transportation prices and the cost of goods and products.
Despite its oil wealth, Nigeria has been unable to refine enough crude to meet local demands so it imports petroleum products, which are then sold at a government-set price.
In 2022, fuel subsidy gulped N4.3 trillion ($9.3 billion), rising even higher in 2023.
