INCOMPLETE and poorly sequenced reforms introduced by President Bola Tinubu’s administration deepened hardship for Nigerians, said the Lead Director of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), Eze Onyekpere.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with The ICIR, Onyekpere said while the removal of petrol subsidy and the floating of the naira were long-debated and, in some cases, necessary, the government failed to follow through with measures that would cushion the effects on citizens and translate the reforms into improved welfare.
“If you look at the critical reforms, I mean the removal of the fuel subsidy, the floating of the naira, and what else has he done, two key of them, you discover that the reforms were not well nuanced, well planned, well sequenced, and well understood by the author of the reforms.
“First of all, I would like to see reforms from the construction of a categorical syllogism. You know, in a categorical syllogism, in logic, you have the first premise, you have the second premise, which is the middle premise, and then you have the conclusion,” he said.
According to him, the Tinubu administration removed petrol subsidy but failed to transparently re-channel the trillions of naira saved into healthcare, education, electricity, water supply or social protection, leaving Nigerians to bear the full brunt of rising costs.
“When you say a reform, the first step you take to remove that subsidy, to say subsidy is gone, is not the end of the reform. So there needs to be the second stage of saying this is what has been saved, and then finally this is where we put the money, and of course that where you put the money leads to improvements in the quality of life, in the security and welfare of the people.
“So what has happened is that the first steps have been taken, but the second and third steps, nobody is talking about them,” he added.
Onyekpere noted that successive governments had justified fuel subsidy removal on the basis that trillions of naira spent annually could be redirected to healthcare, education, electricity and other public services.
However, he said Tinubu’s administration removed the subsidy without clearly identifying or targeting how the savings would be used.
“Nobody is talking about where the money was invested. Nobody is talking about the improvement in the welfare of the people, in the improvement in the services rendered by government, and improvement in the security of the nation,” he said.
He compared the current approach with previous administrations, saying despite public criticism, earlier governments attempted to link subsidy adjustments to visible interventions.
He explained that when Abacha adjusted the subsidy, there was the Petroleum Trust Fund. Under Jonathan, there was SURE-P, adding that one could see roads, drugs, buses and social programmes.
Lack of cushioning measures deepened hardship
Onyekpere said the failure to invest subsidy savings in alternative energy sources such as compressed natural gas (CNG), solar power and renewables worsened the impact of rising fuel prices on households and small businesses.
“If government had invested heavily in alternative energy, reduced tariffs on solar equipment or supported local technology development, people would have had options,” he said, adding that “Instead, Nigerians were left to absorb the full shock.”
He argued that such investments could have reduced energy costs while also supporting climate change mitigation and job creation.
The CSJ director also criticised the floating of the naira, saying the policy was introduced without complementary measures to boost local production and exports.
He noted that currency devaluation was meant to make Nigerian goods more competitive internationally and generate foreign exchange, but this required deliberate policies to support producers.
He opined that many Nigerian exports continued to be rejected abroad due to quality and regulatory issues, limiting the expected gains from the exchange rate reform.
Onyekpere emphasised that the administration’s economic approach was poorly sequenced, warning that introducing multiple painful reforms simultaneously without stabilisation measures worsened inflation and reduced purchasing power.
He said the combined effect of subsidy removal and naira devaluation led to sharp increases in the prices of food and basic goods, while wages remained largely unchanged.
Onyekpere posited that recent adjustments to the minimum wage failed to reflect the scale of currency depreciation and inflation.
While insisting that reforms were unavoidable, he said Nigeria’s challenge laid in execution, sequencing and accountability, not in the idea of reform.
Mustapha Usman is an investigative journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: musman@icirnigeria.com. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M