- There is a point at which patience stops being patience and begins to look like stupid endurance without an end, mere bashing of one’s head against the concrete wall in the hope of cracking it.
For millions of Nigerians, that point may be here now.
The price of petrol keeps moving upward, and with every adjustment, Nigerians are told to understand the economics of the situation. They are told about crude oil prices, exchange rates, market forces, logistics, refining costs and the realities of deregulation.
But there is one reality that cannot be explained away by economic terminology: Nigerians are hurting.
The ordinary citizen does not buy petrol merely to put it in a car. Petrol powers businesses, moves food from farms to markets, transports workers to their places of employment and keeps countless households and enterprises running when electricity fails.
Consequently, every increase in petrol price is effectively an increase in the cost of living.
And that is why the continuing escalation in the pump price deserves more than routine government explanations. It demands a serious national conversation about where Nigeria’s petroleum-sector reform is taking the country—and when Nigerians can reasonably expect to enjoy its promised benefits.
A REFORM THAT MUST NOT BECOME A PERMANENT BURDEN
Let it be said clearly: Nigeria could not continue indefinitely with the old petrol subsidy regime.
The subsidy system became synonymous with enormous public expenditure, opacity, corruption allegations and distortions in the petroleum market. Reform was necessary.
But acknowledging the necessity of reform does not mean Nigerians should be expected to accept an indefinite deterioration in their standard of living as the inevitable price of fixing the economy.
The fundamental question is this:
At what point does the pain of reform begin to produce the promised gains?
If subsidy removal was intended to free government resources for infrastructure, social investment and economic development, Nigerians should be able to see those benefits.
If deregulation was intended to encourage competition and efficiency, consumers should eventually experience more competitive prices and better supply.
If domestic refining was expected to reduce Nigeria’s dependence on imported petroleum products and conserve scarce foreign exchange, the impact should ultimately be reflected in the price Nigerians pay at the pump.
Reform cannot be judged solely by how much government saves. It must also be judged by what the citizen gains.
THE DANGOTE REFINERY QUESTION
The coming of the Dangote Refinery represents one of the most significant developments in Nigeria’s petroleum history.
For decades, Nigeria exported crude and imported much of the refined petroleum products it consumed—a contradiction that became one of the defining absurdities of the country’s oil economy.
The emergence of large-scale domestic refining was therefore expected to change the equation.
It should reduce dependence on imports. It should conserve foreign exchange. It should shorten supply chains. It should create greater energy security.
Most importantly, Nigerians understandably expected it to contribute to more stable and, where market conditions permit, lower petrol prices.
But domestic refining cannot simply become another impressive industrial achievement that Nigerians admire from a distance while remaining perpetually burdened by high fuel prices.
The entire petroleum value chain must become more efficient.
Refining locally is important. But so are crude supply arrangements, transportation, storage, distribution, taxation, regulation, competition and the final pricing mechanism.
The Nigerian consumer must ultimately be at the centre of this equation.
WHO REALLY PAYS FOR PETROL PRICE INCREASES?
Government may announce a new pump price, but it is the Nigerian people who pay the real bill.
The commercial driver pays more and raises his fare.
The transporter pays more and increases the cost of moving goods.
The farmer pays more to transport produce.
The manufacturer spends more on production.
The trader pays more to move merchandise.
The restaurant owner pays more to operate.
The artisan pays more to power equipment.
The family pays more for transportation, food and virtually every service.
And then comes the second wave: inflation.
This is where petrol becomes more than a petroleum-sector issue. It becomes a national economic issue.
A country cannot hope to achieve sustainable economic growth while the cost of moving people, goods and services continues to rise beyond the capacity of its citizens and businesses to absorb.
ELECTRICITY; ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
This is another uncomfortable truth. Nigeria’s dependence on petrol is aggravated by the country’s chronic electricity challenges.
Every time electricity fails, thousands of businesses turn to generators. Every time the cost of petrol rises, their operating expenses rise with it.
This creates a vicious cycle.
High fuel prices increase the cost of production. High production costs increase the price of goods and services. Higher prices reduce purchasing power. Reduced purchasing power weakens businesses. Weaker businesses cut jobs or shut down.
How long can an economy continue along this path?
The answer cannot be another palliative indefinitely.
Nigeria needs a functioning energy ecosystem in which reliable electricity reduces the extraordinary dependence of households and businesses on petroleum products.
GOVERNMENT MUST TALK TO NIGERIANS, NOT AT THEM
One of the greatest weaknesses of the current situation is the communication gap between policy and the people.
Nigerians are repeatedly asked to make sacrifices, but they are rarely given a sufficiently clear timeline for when those sacrifices are expected to yield tangible benefits.
Government must do better.
Citizens deserve to know what the petroleum-sector reforms are intended to achieve over the short, medium and long terms.
They deserve transparency on the factors determining pump prices.
They deserve to know what is being done to stimulate competition.
They deserve to know how domestic refining capacity will translate into consumer benefits.
And, above all, they deserve a credible answer to the question: When will things get better?
NO RETURN TO THE OLD SUBSIDY REGIME—BUT NO BLANK CHEQUE EITHER
The solution is not necessarily a return to the old subsidy system.
Nigeria must learn from its past.
A subsidy regime that consumes public resources without delivering corresponding value is unsustainable. But abandoning subsidy does not mean abandoning responsibility.
Government must intervene intelligently where the market alone cannot protect the vulnerable.
Mass transit should be strengthened.
Public transportation systems should be expanded and made affordable.
Small and medium-sized enterprises should receive meaningful support.
Critical infrastructure should be prioritised.
And the regulatory environment must ensure that competition, rather than market dominance, determines efficiency.
The government must also resist the temptation to regard every increase as an unavoidable act of nature.
Markets are shaped by policies.
Taxes are policies.
Import duties are policies.
Foreign-exchange arrangements are policies.
Transportation infrastructure is policy.
Regulation is policy.
Even the speed with which domestic refining capacity is integrated into the national petroleum supply chain is influenced by policy.
Therefore, when the cost of petrol keeps rising, government cannot simply stand outside the process and say, “That is the market.”
Government helped create the market.
Government must therefore help make it work.
THE CLOCK IS TICKING
Nigeria has reached a critical point.
The country cannot continue to build economic policy around the assumption that citizens have an unlimited capacity to absorb shocks.
They do not.
The Nigerian worker has seen purchasing power eroded.
The small business owner has watched operating costs soar.
The transport worker has seen fuel costs eat deeper into daily income.
Families are adjusting household budgets repeatedly.
Young Nigerians are confronting an economy in which simply moving from one place to another has become increasingly expensive.
Something has to give.
And what must give is not the resilience of the Nigerian people.
It must be the inefficiency within the system.
THE RELIEF MUST BECOME REAL
The government has a responsibility to ensure that the difficult decisions being taken today do not become an excuse for postponing relief indefinitely.
Nigeria cannot remain a crude oil-producing nation that behaves as though it has no control over its energy destiny.
We must refine more.
We must waste less.
We must transport more efficiently.
We must generate more electricity.
We must encourage genuine competition.
We must strengthen regulation.
And we must ensure that the benefits of reform reach the people whose sacrifices make those reforms possible.
The Nigerian people have been told to endure because tomorrow will be better.
Tomorrow cannot remain permanently in the future.
The ultimate test of Nigeria’s petroleum reform is not how sophisticated the policy sounds in government offices, nor how impressive the statistics appear in official documents.
It is what a Nigerian worker pays to get to work.
It is what a farmer spends to move his harvest to market.
It is what a manufacturer spends to produce.
It is what a family can afford at the end of the month.
The pump price is not merely a number on a filling-station board. It is a measure of the pressure on the Nigerian household. And if government truly wants Nigerians to believe that today’s sacrifices are the price of a better tomorrow, then that better tomorrow must begin to show up—at the pump, in the market and in the pockets of the people.
Nigeria cannot keep asking its citizens to absorb the shock forever.
