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….The government must expand subsidized health insurance to cover low-income workers, informal workers, the elderly, pregnant women, children and people living with chronic illnesses. Basic diagnostic tests, maternal care, emergency services and essential medicines should be available at little or no cost to the most vulnerable.
Primary health centers should receive direct and transparent funding, with public dashboards showing what each facility receives and the services it is required to provide. Citizens should be able to confirm whether medicines claimed to have been supplied were actually received and distributed.
Local production of essential medicines and medical consumables should also be encouraged through tax breaks and affordable financing. But companies that receive such incentives must demonstrate that the support has increased local production and reduced the cost of medicines.
A nation that subsidizes the treatment and prevention of disease is not wasting money. It is preserving its human capital.
Subsidize homes that people can afford
Housing costs take up a disproportionate share of family income. In many cities, tenants are required to pay one or two years’ rent in advance, even though most workers receive their salaries monthly.
The government should support affordable housing through low-interest mortgages, rent-to-own programs, serviced land, and reduced costs for locally produced building materials. Housing cooperatives organized by workers, artisans, traders and professional groups should have access to financing for long-term development.
Instead of building a few highly publicized properties that ordinary people can’t afford, the government should allow citizens to build incrementally. It can provide properly planned land, roads, drainage systems, electricity and water, while beneficiaries finance construction in phases.
Housing subsidies should not become another avenue for awarding luxury homes to public officials and their associates. It must be designed for teachers, nurses, artisans, young public employees, traders and young families.
The cost of each publicly financed housing unit, the identity of the contractor, the award criteria and the identity of the beneficiaries should be open to scrutiny. If a house is described as accessible, the public should be told: accessible to whom?
Subsidize education that produces expertise
Nigeria already claims to subsidize education, but too much of our education spending produces certificates without proficiency.
Subsidies should increasingly follow the student and the skills required by the economy. The government should support vocational and technical education in the fields of construction, electrical installations, plumbing, welding, renewable energy maintenance, agriculture, digital technology, healthcare support and manufacturing.
Students from poor families should receive grants and loans, but institutions must also be held accountable for the competence and employability of their graduates. Technical institutes should be rehabilitated and equipped. Companies that train and employ apprentices should receive tax incentives.
These incentives must be linked to verifiable results. A company claiming tax relief for training 1,000 young people must provide evidence that training has taken place, that recognized skills have been acquired and that a reasonable number of participants have managed to find work or business.
We need to subsidize learning that enables people to solve problems, create value and earn a living, not simply the prolonged pursuit of certificates.
Subsidize public transport
One of the quickest ways to reduce the impact of gasoline prices is to provide affordable mass transportation.
Federal and state governments should invest in efficient bus systems, rail networks and waterways where appropriate. Transport cooperatives should be helped to acquire electric and gas buses under transparent reimbursement programs.
A well-managed public transport system benefits everyone, especially workers, students, traders and low-income families. It reduces household spending, congestion, fuel consumption and pressure for a universal petrol subsidy.
Instead of artificially making every gallon of gasoline cheap – including the gasoline consumed by owners of numerous luxury vehicles – the government can make the everyday commute of the common worker affordable.
Also in this case, the cost of the buses, the methods of purchase, the choice of operators and the fares charged must be public. Subsidized buses should not mysteriously disappear into private fleets or become campaign vehicles belonging to politicians.
Support work, not idleness
There is also room for temporary cash transfers, especially during times of severe economic adjustment. But cash support must be targeted, verifiable and linked to a credible social register. It should protect the elderly, people with disabilities, unemployed young people in training and families living in extreme poverty.
In addition to this, the government could introduce wage support for small businesses that employ and train young Nigerians. Tax credits could be offered to businesses that create verifiable new jobs. Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises should have access to affordable credit, particularly in productive sectors.
The best social protection is not permanent dependence. It is the opportunity to work, produce and live with dignity.
Transparency is not optional
The success of any new subsidy philosophy will depend on transparency.
Nigeria’s problem has never been the complete absence of good policies. Our biggest problem has been the control of those policies by privileged interests. Programs announced in the name of the poor often become enrichment opportunities for businessmen, officials, politicians and their associates.
Each subsidy program must therefore answer some fundamental questions:
Who receives the subsidy? How much is spent? What are the selection criteria? What outcome is expected? How will this result be measured? What benefit comes to the common citizen? Who controls the program and what happens when it is abused?
The total cost of each subsidy should appear openly in federal and state budgets. The lists of beneficiaries should be verifiable. Assignments and payments should be digitally traceable. Independent audit reports should be published regularly and not hidden away in government offices.
The National Assembly and the state Houses of Assembly must exercise serious oversight. Civil society organisations, professional bodies, organized labour, consumer associations and the media must have access to the information needed to follow the money.
Grants should also have review and expiration dates. A program that does not reduce costs, increase production, expand access, or improve lives should be redesigned or discontinued.
Any beneficiary – be it an oil refinery, a solar company, a fertilizer supplier, a transport operator, a property developer, a school or a hospital – who diverts a grant or fails to pass on the intended benefit should lose the grant, refund the money and face prosecution where fraud is found.
Transparency cannot be an afterthought added to a grant program after the money has been spent. It must be integrated into the program from the beginning.
The guiding principle must be simple: public money must produce a measurable public benefit.
Nigeria’s first choice
Nigeria cannot afford to blindly return to the old petrol subsidy regime. But the government cannot simply tell suffering citizens to hold on indefinitely while the reform’s promised benefits remain remote.
Economic reform cannot survive on statistics alone. Ultimately it will have to become food on the table, medicines in clinics, electricity in homes, accessible transport to work and hope in the lives of citizens.
The poor do not experience the economy through charts, foreign reserves or credit ratings. They experience this through the price of rice, the cost of transportation, the availability of medicines, school fees, house rent and whether their small businesses can stay open.
The answer to the current crisis is not to subsidize gasoline indiscriminately again. It’s about supporting domestic refining in a transparent way and subsidizing the things that make expensive gasoline less central to our survival.
Give local refineries Nigerian crude with a transparent and properly monitored concession and insist that the savings reach consumers. Provide homes with affordable solar energy and families will buy less fuel. Provide cities with efficient public transport and fewer people will depend on private cars. Give farmers affordable inputs and storage and food prices will fall. Give citizens health insurance and disease will not destroy entire families. Provide young people with proper education and productive skills, and they will build livelihoods instead of waiting endlessly for government jobs.
The debate, therefore, should no longer be framed as subsidy/non-subsidy.
The real choice is between a subsidy that fuels consumption and corruption and one that expands production, opportunity and human well-being.
Nigeria does not need the old subsidy returned. It needs a better subsidy philosophy, one that shifts public resources from waste to productivity, from privilege to need, and from temporary relief to lasting independence.
Subsidize the farmer, not the smuggler. Subsidize the patient, not the fraudulent claims. Subsidize the student, the commuter, the homeowner and the small producer. Support local refining, but ensure that every concession is disclosed and that every benefit reaches the consumer. Above all, subsidize the ability of Nigerians to live, work and prosper and let people see clearly where every naira goes.
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