Why I Still Support Fuel Subsidy Removal Despite the Hardship

Fuel subsidy removal has been very harsh on me. I have moved from being able to save to spending far more on fuel each month than I did before. Still, my support for removal is not because I support Tinubu. I do not support Tinubu, Obi or Atiku politically, even though I find Atiku personally charismatic. I once strongly supported subsidy. From the 1990s through 2011, I saw it as one of the few ways government could help struggling Nigerians. I criticised earlier attempts to raise fuel prices because they felt insensitive. But when the Jonathan administration argued that subsidy costs were consuming too much public revenue, I looked into the issue more closely. What changed my mind was the scale of the spending. When fuel prices were partially adjusted, government revenue increased and funds became available for programmes such as SURE-P. I concluded that a subsidy budget can become unsustainable when global oil prices and import costs rise, especially if government repeatedly borrows to cover the gap. In my view, years of borrowing to sustain subsidies contributed to Nigeria's debt burden and made removal difficult to avoid. Tinubu was part of the political system that helped create this mess, but bringing back a broad fuel subsidy would only deepen the problem. People may disagree with me, but this is why I remain opposed to subsidy payments.

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