Nigerians have expressed concern over implementing subsidy removal despite President Bola Tinubu’s assurance that it would not take effect immediately.

A cross-section of Ibadan, Oyo State residents expressed their feelings on Wednesday in separate interviews.

Most filling stations in Ibadan had started selling petrol at N500 per litre as the new official price released by NNPC.

However, queues had disappeared from many of the filling stations compared to what was obtained on Tuesday.

An Entrepreneur, Tobi Adeyemi, said the development was not good.

According to Mr Adeyemi, the new administration should have provided some respite for Nigerians, considering the enormous hardship being faced by Nigerians.

“This will definitely affect prices of goods and services; from tomato sellers to foodstuffs; transportation, increase in fuel price and so on.

“We will all bear the brunt of it together. I only pity salary earners who are on a fixed income. Besides, I don’t believe this is the right timing,” Mr Adeyemi said.

Also, a sales representative, Adeyinka Adekunle, said the previous administration had budgeted subsidy till the end of June.

“Everything is sort of confusing now because of the budgetary provision for subsidy till June end,” Adekunle said.

He, however, said a nation that would be great has to go through some teething periods.

In his remarks, an artisan, Akinola Akinkunmi, said he has yet to comprehend the situation because things were hard already, and buying fuel at N500 per litre now would worsen the situation.

Mr Akinkunmi said: “I cannot yet wrap my mind around how my business will survive; we are already struggling to make ends meet.

“With this development and absence of power supply from the distributing company, we are definitely going further down the poverty line,” Mr Akinkunmi said.

Another entrepreneur, Demola Adedeji, said the timing was wrong as the economy had been in bad shape for some time.

“At least, some things should have been put in place before the total removal of subsidy,” Mr Adedeji said.

In his contributions, Yinka Ajadi, a businessman, said many people would go into depression as the blood pressure of many Nigerians struggling to survive the situation would rise.

Mr Ajadi said, “We can only hope for critical intervention at this time, such as solving the problem of power and production inputs.”

(NAN)