TINUBU 10 - ATIKU 0
The fuel discount proposed by the Tinubu administration is not a confession that subsidy removal was a bad idea as political opposition would want to spin it. It simply demonstrates a government that still knows the difference between a shock absorber and a bottomless pit.
On 8 October 2026, the Minister of Finance, Taiwo Oyedele, announced a 30-day margin discount on petrol sold by NNPC retail stations, with public transporters first in line, and a proposed ceiling of ₦1,350 per litre on the landing cost, to be reviewed monthly. Where costs rise above that ceiling, refiners and importers carry the shortfall and recover it later when crude or the exchange rate allows.
The Presidency was explicit: NNPC is selling at cost, without its usual retail margin. This is not the old subsidy. It is a timed, bounded response to a spike in global crude and petrol prices and wisdom gets distinction.
Critics of the Tinubu administration, especially the opposition now campaigning on Atiku Abubakar’s promise to restore subsidy, have treated the announcement as proof that removal was a mistake. It is the opposite. A government that removes an open-ended drain, then later designs a narrow, temporary, recoverable cushion when prices jump, is doing what competent governments do. It is reviewing.
Review is not reversal. Reversal would be a return to the regime in which Nigeria paid, every month, for a product whose true beneficiaries were smugglers, rent-seekers, illegal immigrants , and neighbouring markets, while the Federation Account was starved. Refinement is what Oyedele described: sell at cost for 30 days, cap the underlying cost, recover the difference when conditions improve, and keep working on domestic refining, crude supply arrangements, CNG and transport costs.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR removed the subsidy on his first day in office because the alternative was fiscal collapse dressed up as compassion. The pain as a result of the removal was real. So was the alternative. Before removal, the country was losing billions of dollars a year to a scheme that could not be audited cleanly and could not be sustained.
But when BAT removed the subsidy, the money did not vanish into a slogan. It reappeared in the accounts that fund states and local governments. Net FAAC distributions rose from ₦9.18 trillion in 2022 to ₦15.26 trillion in 2024 and a record ₦21.90 trillion in 2025. Compared with the monthly run-rate before removal, states received about ₦9.17 trillion in additional allocations between June 2023 and December 2025, and local governments about ₦6.66 trillion. State receipts moved from roughly ₦2.06 trillion in 2022 to ₦8.93 trillion in 2025. That is the benefit Nigerians should not take their eyes off, or be distracted from, even while they argue about pump prices.
A governor who now receives two or three times what his predecessor received cannot honestly tell his people that Abuja took their petrol money and gave them nothing in return.
The right demand, then, is not the cheapest litre at any fiscal cost. It is value for money. Value for money is not the lowest sticker price. It is whether the naira that no longer disappears into subsidy actually becomes roads, classrooms, primary healthcare, security and a transport system that does not collapse every time Brent moves.
The demand for value for money runs in three directions. Firstly citizens must demand value for money from government, federal and state, with published volumes, published exposure and a scorecard at day 30. Secondly citizens must demand value from one another: transporters who receive priority fuel and then leave fares untouched are pocketing a public concession. And thirdly each Nigerian citizen must demand it of yourselves and ask what none essential am I spending money on ?
A reform that frees revenue and still leaves households exposed is unfinished. A reform that is abandoned because the transition hurts is how Nigeria got here in the first place.
Atiku’s offer to revert to subsidy is not a social policy. It is a promise to reopen the tap that the numbers above closed. Temporary relief under rules, with a ceiling, a recovery clause and an expiry date, is not the same thing as a standing subsidy with no ceiling, no recovery and no political will to end it. The Tinubu government has shown it can listen without abandoning the reform. Responsiveness and focus are not opposites and a captain who adjusts the sails or rudder has not turned the ship around.
One small plea, offered with affection. Do not hear “discount” and begin to fuel your car to undertake a local government tour of places you have no business visiting. The cousin in the next state can wait. The wedding you were not invited to can proceed without you. The 30 days are a bridge for transport and household costs, not a starting gun for joyriding. Otherwise we will spend November explaining that the fuel “finished,” when what finished was the sense that we needed to understand that, a temporary price is not a permanent excuse.
Relief today is welcome. In 31 days Nigerians should find themselves still building the new system, not driving back to the old one.
And that is why I am BATIFIED
Comments