The Promise and the Price: What Tinubu's Subsidy Removal Means for the Nigerian Poor

When President Bola Tinubu stepped onto the podium at Eagle Square on May 29, 2023, and declared that "fuel subsidy is gone," the crowd erupted. For many Nigerians — particularly the elite commentariat and economic reform advocates — it was the sound of a long-overdue reckoning. The subsidy, they argued, had for decades been a drain on the public treasury: a leaking pipe that cost the government trillions of naira annually while disproportionately benefiting the wealthy who owned multiple cars and the fuel importers who had turned the system into a private ATM.

They were not entirely wrong. The fuel subsidy regime was ridden with corruption, opacity, and inefficiency. The NNPCL's books were a maze. The subsidy verification processes were susceptible to manipulation. Billions disappeared into a system that was, at its worst, a sophisticated mechanism for transferring public wealth into private hands.

But economic arguments, however valid, do not exist in a vacuum. They exist in the real conditions of real people — and the real conditions of Nigeria are these: over 100 million citizens living below the poverty line; a minimum wage that had not been meaningfully reviewed in years; a naira in freefall; and an inflation rate that peaked at 34.8% in December 2023 before beginning a gradual moderation — the highest level recorded since Nigeria began tracking CPI inflation in its current form.

"When you remove a subsidy in a country with no social safety net, no functioning public transportation, and a collapsed manufacturing sector, you are not reforming an economy. You are conducting an experiment on the poor."

The Arithmetic of Suffering

Let us be precise about what happened. Before May 29, 2023, Nigerians purchased petrol at approximately ₦185 per litre. Within weeks of the subsidy removal, the pump price had climbed to over ₦600 per litre. By 2025, it crossed ₦1,000 in many parts of the country. For a bus driver in Aba, a petty trader in Maiduguri, a bricklayer in Kaduna — this was not a policy reform. It was an economic catastrophe visited upon them without warning, without cushion, and without a plan.

Transportation costs doubled, then tripled. The price of food — overwhelmingly transported by road across Nigeria's vast geography — rose in lockstep. The cost of running generators, which millions of Nigerians depend on because the national grid delivers on average fewer than eight hours of electricity daily, became unbearable for households already stretched to breaking point.

The government promised palliatives. They came late, were poorly targeted, and were widely regarded as inadequate. A one-time payment of ₦8,000 to the poorest Nigerians — the figure that circulated in early government communications — was widely mocked. For context: ₦8,000 would not cover a week's transportation costs for a Lagos market woman at the new petrol prices.

The Moral Question

This piece is not an argument for the return of the fuel subsidy. It is an argument about how reform is conducted — and who bears its cost. Economic reform that places its entire burden on those least equipped to absorb it is not courage. It is negligence dressed in the language of progress.

The Tinubu administration had options. A phased removal could have given households and businesses time to adjust. Direct and verifiable cash transfers to the most vulnerable — managed transparently — could have cushioned the blow. Investment in public transportation infrastructure, in parallel with subsidy removal, would have created an alternative to private vehicle dependence. None of these were in place when the subsidy was yanked away on inauguration day.

The price of that unpreparedness has been paid — is being paid — by the Nigerian poor. This is the record. And a democracy worthy of the name demands that we read it clearly.

This piece represents the editorial position of NITIZEN's Conscience Letters initiative. We welcome responses and counter-arguments at hello@nitizen.ng. Conscience Letters is committed to evidence-based civic analysis and welcomes diverse perspectives.