By Kenneth Gbandi
Diaspora perspective-The debate over fuel subsidy is ultimately a choice about the purpose of government: do citizens exist to finance the state, or should national resources be managed to improve human lives? Hon. Kenneth Chibuogwu Gbandi argues that true economic reform requires relief, accountability, and a human face not just balanced balance sheets.
When former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar suggested that a future administration should restore elements of Nigeria’s fuel subsidy, the political establishment moved swiftly to dismiss the idea as a regressive step back toward corruption and economic distortion. That reaction, while convenient for defenders of the status quo, fundamentally misses the broader point about how structural reform ought to function. The central question facing Nigeria is not whether to embrace an unsustainable, corrupt-ridden system of the past, but whether any government can genuinely claim success when an economic shock-therapy approach inflicts severe hardship on its population without providing the promised safety nets or structural alternatives.
Living and observing policy implementation across Western capitals, one sees that citizens in developed economies regularly accept difficult fiscal choices, provided those choices are transparently managed, logical in sequence, and buffered by reliable social infrastructure. What breaks public trust is sacrifice without accountability and hardship without measurable improvement. When President Bola Tinubu announced in May 2023 that the subsidy was gone, the immediate impact was an aggressive price shock transmitted directly across an economy deeply reliant on petrol. In Nigeria, fuel is not a luxury consumer goods item; it powers the small business generators that keep the economy moving in the absence of a reliable national grid, and it dictates the cost of moving agricultural produce to urban markets.
Removing such a foundational support mechanism before building affordable public transit, stabilising the power grid, or expanding social safety nets turned a necessary fiscal adjustment into an economic trauma. Even major international financial institutions that long advocated for subsidy removal emphasised that direct compensatory measures were essential to shield households from immediate inflationary shocks. The flaw in the current strategy lies in its reckless sequencing. While the federal and state governments now enjoy unprecedented allocations from saved revenues, the average citizen is left asking where the tangible benefits have gone, as public transport remains expensive, infrastructure underfunded, and poverty rates rising.
Atiku Abubakar’s intervention is best understood not as a campaign pledge to resurrect legacy corruption, but as an argument for a structured, human-centred transition. A pragmatic approach would leverage domestic refining capacities through preferential crude arrangements bound by strict consumer-protection conditions, establishing a managed price-support band alongside direct assistance for essential transport operators and small enterprises. True market reform must be accompanied by stringent accountability, including independent auditing and the recovery of diverted funds. Economic stability cannot be achieved at the expense of household survival, and Nigeria must recognise that protecting its productive citizens during a transition is the hallmark of responsible governance, not economic backwardness.
Hon. Kenneth Chibuogwu Gbandi is the Global Chairman of the African Democratic Congress–Diaspora Network, former Deputy National Chairman of the ADC, and former Continental Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation Europe.
