Commercial motorcyclists across the border in Garoua, Northern Cameroun, are protesting the removal of petrol subsidy by Nigeria’s new President, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, lamenting that it is driving them out of business.
While the subsidy removal announced by Tinubu in his Inauguration Speech on May 29 took the cost of a litre of petrol to around N500 in the country, the price in Garoua is now 750cfa (about N800) per litre.
The youthful commercial motorcyclists lamented their fate as they expressed their dissatisfaction in a blend of Fulfulde and French, criticising President Tinubu in a TikTok video a minute and 40 seconds in length.
“They are just cursing Tinubu and saying that they get everything from Nigeria and that their government in Cameroun doesn’t care and so on,” Fulfude expert who translated the video for News Express said.
“They said that they have been relying on Nigeria for everything and that this action has clearly awakened them that the Tinubu Administration is here to deal with them. And that the action of removing fuel subsidy in Nigeria has translated to very high fuel prices in Cameroun and is pushing them out of business,” the translator further said.
“This,” according to him, “proves what we’ve been saying in Nigeria: most of the so-called subsidy on petrol is simply used to support the economies of our neighbouring countries.”
Organised Labour in Nigeria had issued a strike notice in the wake of the fuel subsidy withdrawal but called it off following a restraining order by the National Industrial Court in Abuja.
