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The Tinubu administration’s announcement of a 30-day petrol discount at NNPC petrol stations highlights the contradictions and political opportunism that have characterized the government’s handling of the fuel subsidy issue.
For months, President Bola Tinubu and the ruling APC have insisted that petrol subsidies would end forever. When former Vice President Atiku Abubakar proposed a transparent production-based subsidy to make locally refined gasoline affordable, the administration and its propagandists rejected the proposal as economically unwise.
Today, the same administration announces government-negotiated price caps, discounts on gasoline sales, and agreements to protect consumers from market fluctuations.
What has changed: economic reality or the approaching 2027 general election?
While we welcome any genuine attempt to reduce the suffering of Nigerians, a temporary intervention must not become another exercise in political window dressing.
The first issue concerns equity and accessibility.
NNPC Retail has a network of over 900 outlets nationwide. Spread across Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, this represents an average of around 25 stations per state and FCT, although the actual distribution is far from uniform.
What happens to Nigerians living in communities without NNPC petrol stations? Do they have to travel long distances, spending little money on transportation, to access a government-sponsored discount?
More worrying is the NNPC’s July 2026 report, which placed petrol availability in its retail network at just 52%.
How does a government that has struggled to ensure constant availability of gasoline through its retail network plan to provide meaningful help nationwide through that same network?
The second question concerns the government’s increasingly convenient definition of subsidy.
Finance Minister Taiwo Oyedele insists that the proposed interventions are neither subsidies nor price controls. Yet the government is negotiating a ceiling below which gasoline costs can be kept, while proposing that refiners and importers make up any resulting deficit when market conditions improve.
Who ultimately bears this deficit? How will it be recovered? Will public resources, NNPC revenue, or future consumers bear the burden?
An intervention that shifts costs, postpones recovery or uses public resources to make gasoline cheaper raises legitimate subsidy issues that cannot be resolved by changing the name.
The third question is why Nigerians should accept 30 days of selective aid after more than three years of mounting hardship.
Nigerians need affordable petrol permanently, not an election discount that expires after 30 days.
Atiku’s production-based subsidy proposal offers a more coherent direction: supporting domestic refining through transparent, targeted, time-bound crude oil pricing agreements, with safeguards to ensure that lower production costs translate into lower pump prices for consumers across the country.
It is designed to bolster local manufacturing, reduce avoidable costs and provide relief beyond a handful of retail outlets.
Interestingly, the Tinubu administration is now also discussing forward sales of crude oil to domestic refineries. This reinforces the need to examine interventions from the production side rather than treating them as economic heresy simply because Atiku proposed them.
The Tinubu government cannot condemn Atiku’s proposal in September and embrace the logic of oil price intervention in October while pretending there is no contradiction.
Policies are made for the well-being of the people. People are not created to suffer in the name of policies.
We challenge the administration to publish details of the proposed price modulation, disclose the financial implications, identify all participating outlets and explain how it will benefit Nigerians without access to NNPC stations.
More importantly, the government must explain how this intervention will result in lower transport fares, cheaper food and significant reductions in the cost of living.
Nigerians deserve a lasting political response, not temporary political relief calculated on the electoral calendar.
It is particularly revealing that this announcement comes just a day after Daniel Bwala, President Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Political Communication, acknowledged on national television that the administration’s economic reforms had pushed more Nigerians into poverty.
On Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday, Bwala admitted that more Nigerians have fallen into poverty as a result of government reforms.
When even the President’s advisor recognizes that government policies have pushed Nigerians deeper into poverty, it becomes indefensible to continue to view those policies as untouchable.
The question is no longer whether Nigerians are suffering. The Presidency also recognized this. The question is: why did the government wait until another election approached to start considering measures it had previously rejected when Atiku proposed them.
If the Tinubu administration finally recognized that government intervention is necessary to protect Nigerians from unsustainable oil prices, it should have the humility to recognize this reality instead of playing politics with the well-being of citizens.
Nigerians cannot feed themselves economic theories, fuel their vehicles with political propaganda or feed their families with promises of future prosperity.
President Tinubu needs to be reminded that between 1999 and 2007, fuel subsidies were not removed nor were taxes increased, yet the government of that era took the Nigerian economy to number one in Africa. But today, with all the increases, Nigeria is in third place.
The well-being of Nigerians must come before Tinubu’s political chess game and the survival of an administration increasingly concerned with securing another term in office.
Signed:
Atiku press office
Abuja
