Should Nigeria bring back PMS subsidies?

Should we bring back fuel subsidy? Now, there are two schools of thought.

The folks that will tell you, hey, let's bring back fuel subsidy are essentially telling you that, hey, costs have gone up.

the cost in nigeria have gone up and we haven't seen the benefits the folks that are for fuel subsidies staying back basically saying listen we cannot go back to fuel subsidy in nigeria it's just too expensive so it's both of them are speaking across each order and i think we're asking the wrong questions i don't think the real question is if fuel subsidy we should go back to the fuel subsidy regime uh just for full disclosure i myself do not believe myself do not believe that we should go back uh to bring it back to fuel subsidy but those that want us to go back have a point and we're going to see their point as we go along i don't think that the debate is about fuel subsidy right if you call up a guy on a nigerian street if you go to nigerian street and you ask a nigerian should fuel substitute what is no what is fuel subsidy explain to me what fuel subsidy is give it give it to me i doubt you would get an answer that is accurate in terms of the data data and in terms of the economic intent of that policy you will struggle to find many nigerians They understand what fuel subsidy actually means.

But you will not struggle to find me in Nigeria that understand that their costs have gone up and that the price of PMS has gone up and that they are connecting the price of PMS going up to their cost of living going up you will not struggle to find nigerians tell you that and i think that's where the communication gap i think is happening if you look at the the slide i just shared i shared i asked a question on social media and i said do you want the subsidy on pms to return this is not a scientific poll right about 2047 people voted 58% said they want Subjit to come back.

58%.

Only 33% were definite to say subsidies should not come back.

Only 33%, only a quarter.

33%, right? We had about 9% undecided.

Again, it's not a scientific poll.

And again, most of the folks that would vote here are maybe folks that follow me and all that kind of stuff.

But even those that follow me know that I support the subsidy going.

And we're going to get to that.

There's still a 58%.

um number of people of the respondents on this poll say they want the pms subject to come back again let me say it again if you ask these folks that have voted what is the economics of pms subsidy what is actually going on what are we trying to achieve on the economic front you will struggle to hear anyone actually tell you oh this is what we are against And this is what we want to do.

This is what we want to achieve in terms of macroeconomics.

You will struggle to find that.

But again, you will not struggle, I say it again, to find people that will tell you, listen, my cost of living... was better before subsidy was removed.

And now subsidy has been removed and my cost of living has gone up.

It hasn't reduced.

You won't find folks that would argue with you on that.

So let's go into this first slide that I have.

Let's make the argument for why subsidies should not come back.

And you'll see the points I'm making.

This is the chart of how much Nigeria spent on fuel subsidies from 2016 to 2023. why am i picking those years because in the past remember in when we had the previous government wanting to take away his fear subsidy we're talking about the government of good luck ebola jonathan when we take away fuel subsidies and there was a push to say there is no we should keep the subsidies but from 2016 we had subsidies applied fully The Buhari Admission applied subsidies fully across the board.

So we can go back there and look at the total cost of those subsidies.