During his  inaugural speech on May 29, 2023 as the newly elected President of Nigeria,  Bola Ahmed Tinubu announced that the Subsidy on petrol has been removed. He said the former President Muhammadu Buhari removed  it in the early part of his second tenure in government hence there was no provision for the petrol subsidy in the 2023 budget. Apparently, Nigerians did not bother about the clandestine removal of the subsidy because all they seemed to have wanted was price stabilization and availability of the product, because they were  categorically told by the past administration that the huge cost of subsiding petrol for the people had been the major cause of occasional scarcity of the product in the country. The past administration told the people severally that a few rich individuals who had the license to import the product into the country were the ones benefiting from the petrol subsidy as against the poor whom the subsidy was primarily meant for. The government accused the subsidy thieves (as they were called) for inflating the cost of importation of petrol and  diverting the product to some neighbouring countries such as Benin Republic, Chad and Cameroon where they sell it  at a higher rate than the market price in Nigeria. The government also alleged that some importers collected money from the government in the past without importing the product commensurate with the amount of money they collected from the government. Unfortunately, the alleged subsidy thieves are yet to be unmasked as at the time of writing  this story!

Even though some Nigerians were not taken aback with the Subsidy Removal, they felt that the announcement  came rather hastily because they had expected the President to settle down in office and put measures in place to alleviate the obvious sufferings the subsidy removal would cause before taking such a critical and drastic decision, because Nigeria being  an oil dependent nation would be greatly affected by any slight increase in price of the product. Typical of filling stations around the country, a few hours after the presidential announcement of removal of fuel subsidy, the pump price of petrol went  up from One Hundred and Ninety Five Naira (N195.00 to six Hundred and seventeenth N617.00)! Expectedly, transporters, especially those who do inter-state journeys, increased their fares by over 100%! For instance, a journey of 340Km - Lagos to Benin City, which used to cost N7,000 by bus, rose to N15,000! Other sectors of the economy also suffered great shock as a result of the sudden removal of the subsidy. Food prices skyrocketed;   cost of labour and services went up.

It has been almost three months since the President made the announcement and the effect of the petrol subsidy removal continues to be visibly felt in all aspects of human endeavour in the country.  It has indeed brought excruciating pain and untold hardship on the people. Most families can no longer feed well; monthly income salary earners spend over 70% of their salary on transportation. Employers of labour are already cutting down the size of their workforce due to the cost of production arising  from the high cost of petrol to power their equipment.

As a way of alleviating the sufferings of the people occasioned by the subsidy removal, the government announced a conditional cash transfer of Eight Thousand Naira (N8,000) to the vulnerable and poor persons in the country. This idea did not go down well with the people hence the proposal was met with  a public outcry. Consequently, the organized labour under the umbrella of the Nigerian Labour Congress ( NLC) led a nationwide protest which lasted for one day to register their anger against the removal of the subsidy. The NLC argued that the government should have put measures in place to cushion the effect of the subsidy removal before ending the subsidy. One of such measures, the NLC said, was to have repaired  the country's moribund refineries. The outcome of the protest was that the government promised to look into the demands of the people and assured the NLC that the Port Harcourt refinery will resume operation by December 2023. Government's response to the NLC protest is a welcome development because it at least shows that the wish of the people is respected even though some people are skeptical about the promise to repair the Port Harcourt refinery by the end of 2023!

In most developed countries, subsidy abounds in virtually every aspect of the lives of the people. The health sector is subsided, hence it functions well; the educational sector receives a reasonable amount of subsidy, hence it is okay; social amenities abound for the comfort of the people.  In most European countries and America, if you're unemployed for any legitimate reason, you are paid unemployment benefits. What bigger palliative could that be? We therefore think that palliatives as practiced in other countries can be replicated here in Nigeria so that the poor can at least breathe.