• Sanwo-Olu slams subsidy return campaign as empty, unrealistic buzz
• BudgIT challenges FG to translate higher revenue into welfare gains

Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has said the call by the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) for the Federal Government’s intervention to curtail fuel price hikes has put President Bola Tinubu administration’s argument over petrol subsidy removal to shame.

However, Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu said politicians campaigning for the reversal of oil subsidies were only resorting to populist politics that would ultimately fail. He argued that any candidate assuring Nigerians of oil subsidy’s return was simply building their campaign on empty promises that would end up deceiving voters.

Despite a sharp increase in government revenue, Nigerians are yet to feel the full benefits of the Federal Government’s economic reforms, as rising food and fuel costs continue to erode household incomes, BudgIT has said.

Atiku, in a statement by his media team yesterday, noted that IPMAN’s call for intervention “is fundamentally significant because it came from people who buy, distribute and sell petroleum products every day” and therefore understand, beyond government propaganda, what expensive petrol is doing to businesses and Nigerian families.

IPMAN President, Abubakar Maigandi, had appealed to Tinubu to broker a deal with the Dangote Refinery to cut fuel prices.

His comments came amid the latest fuel pump price hike to between N1,310 and N1,350 per litre.

Atiku backed IPMAN’s call for government intervention with domestic refiners to reduce petrol prices.

He said: “IPMAN has come late to this conversation, but it has come to the right conclusion. The association is now saying that the government cannot simply stand aside while petrol prices punish Nigerians, and that deliberate subsidy around domestic refining can help bring prices down. That is precisely the policy principle President Tinubu and his gang of jesters spent weeks trying to ridicule.

“Tinubu’s argument has always depended on deliberately confusing the import-subsidy bazaar and a transparent, production-linked intervention that strengthens Nigerian refining and delivers measurable relief to Nigerian consumers,” he stated.

Atiku proposed the return of fuel subsidies if elected.

However, Tinubu’s government insisted that the removal of fuel subsidy was necessary to stabilise the economy.

SANWO-OLU, while delivering the 7th Freedom Online Newspaper Lecture yesterday with the theme, ‘2027 Elections, Economy, Security and Nigeria’s Future’, observed that the oil subsidy policy, which was introduced to tackle the shortcomings of local oil supplies stemming from inefficiencies at state-owned refineries, was not intended as a permanent intervention.

The lecture, chaired by former Minister for Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, at Sheraton Lagos Hotels, in Ikeja, had former governor of Ogun State and Senator representing Ogun East, Gbenga Daniel, as the Special Guest of Honour.

Delivering a paper, Sanwo-Olu delved into the ongoing economic reforms, security matters and electoral reconfiguration being undertaken by the Federal Government, highlighting the gains and the prospects for future growth.

Sanwo-Olu said: “The oil subsidy was not removed because anybody enjoyed removing it. It was removed because it had become a hole in the national purse through which the money for roads, schools and hospitals was draining away. The intervention was never reaching the ordinary motorist it was supposed to help. In the build-up to the 2023 elections, every major candidate promised to remove it. Only one of them was in a position to do it, and he did it on his first day in office.

“I will not stand here and tell you that oil subsidy removal has been painless. It has not. Lagosians, particularly, have felt it at the pump, at the market, and in the price of a bag of rice. Any governor who tells you otherwise has not been listening to his own people. But, the measure of a reform is not whether it hurts; it is whether it heals, and the evidence that this one is healing is now arriving, quarter by quarter.”

ccording to him, the states have had it so good. “Since the subsidy was removed, the monthly allocations to states and local governments have more than doubled in naira terms.”

BUDGIT’S position was in reaction to the Federal Government’s position that Nigeria was on course to achieve a $1 trillion economy by 2030, following the latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth figure.

The civic-tech organisation noted that state governments received N15.5 trillion in revenue in 2025, more than three times the N4.8 trillion recorded in 2022.

However, it said the increase in revenue had not automatically translated into stronger fiscal capacity, improved public services or better living conditions for Nigerians.

In its assessment of the reforms, BudgIT noted that food inflation stood at 20.31 per cent in July, while petrol prices had risen to about N1,345 per litre in parts of the country.

It said higher fuel prices had continued to drive up transport fares, food prices and production costs, leaving households with less disposable income after meeting their basic needs.

Reforms, it added, would only deliver meaningful dividends when incomes could cover more household needs, public services reduced the costs Nigerians bear privately, and economic shocks no longer pushed more people into poverty.