Atiku's Subsidy vs Tinubu's Discount: We Will Not Engage in Academic Exercise With a Man Who Cannot Find His Certificates

By Wisdom Oluwadarasimi

The Federal Government has a new economic philosophy. It goes like this: when a policy is proposed by the opposition, it is retrogressive, fiscally unsustainable, and economically illiterate. When the same policy is adopted by the government a few weeks later, it becomes a visionary intervention designed to cushion the impact of global shocks on vulnerable households.

In August, the Presidency challenged Atiku Abubakar to explain how he would fund his proposed petrol subsidy. Presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga demanded fiscal arithmetic. Where would the money come from? Would he borrow? Would he cut salaries and pensions? The implication was clear: this man is reckless, desperate for power, and ignorant of governance and the economy.

By October, the same government announced a thirty-day petrol discount at NNPC stations, with the Finance Minister explaining that NNPC would forgo its profit margin and sell at cost. The Presidency described this as a gesture backed by President Tinubu to cushion the impact of global crude oil price shocks. The Finance Minister was emphatic: this must not be misinterpreted as the restoration of petrol subsidy.

Of course it must not. That would require admitting something embarrassing.

Here is the arithmetic that the government hopes Nigerians will not do. If NNPC's landing cost is one thousand three hundred naira, it will sell at that same price. The difference between the market price and the discounted price is absorbed somewhere. Whether you call it a profit margin forgone, a discount, or a subsidy, the economic effect is identical: someone is paying a sum of money to reduce the price that the consumer sees at the pump. The label changes nothing about the mechanics.

This is not a complex debate. It is not an academic exercise. It is a simple question of who pays and who benefits. When the previous government ran a subsidy regime, the government paid. When the current government runs a discount, NNPC pays. But NNPC is not a private charity. It is a national oil company owned by the Federation. When it forgoes profit, the Federation receives less. When the Federation receives less, the money available for salaries, pensions, roads, hospitals, and schools shrinks. The discount is a subsidy by another name, paid from a different pocket, but paid nonetheless.

The Finance Minister himself admitted the scale of what he is avoiding. He said returning petrol to its pre-reform price would cost more than twenty trillion naira annually. Fixing petrol at five hundred naira per litre would cost over sixteen trillion. These are staggering figures, and they are meant to frighten Nigerians into accepting that subsidy is impossible. But if subsidy is fiscally impossible, then a discount that achieves the same price suppression is equally impossible. The only difference is that one is honest about its cost, and the other hides it in the books of a national oil company.

The government that spent years insisting that subsidy only enriched a cabal of importers and middlemen should now explain who benefits from its discounted petrol. If the old subsidy was a scam, the new discount is a conjuring trick. The same money leaves the same national purse. The same price distortion exists. The same incentive for smuggling across borders remains, as Aliko Dangote himself has warned. The only thing that has changed is the name.

And then there is the question of the refinery. For years, the Dangote Refinery has been the most significant private investment in Nigeria's downstream sector. It was built to reduce the country's dependence on imported petrol, to save foreign exchange, and to create jobs. The government has praised it repeatedly as a symbol of what is possible when the private sector is allowed to operate. Yet when Atiku proposed a production subsidy that would have made crude feedstock cheaper for domestic refiners, the government accused him of wanting to destroy the very refinery it claims to champion.

Atiku's proposal was not to force Dangote to sell below cost. It was to reduce the cost of crude supplied to domestic refiners through a transparent mechanism, so that the savings could be passed to consumers without bankrupting the refinery. Dangote himself raised legitimate concerns about government-imposed prices that would force refiners to operate at a loss. Atiku agreed with him. The government, meanwhile, is now negotiating a ceiling on ex-gantry costs that would require refiners and importers to absorb shortfalls and recover them later. This is precisely the kind of price intervention that Atiku warned against, and precisely the kind of intervention that threatens the viability of the very refinery the government claims to protect.

So the government's position is this: Atiku's production subsidy would hurt Dangote Refinery. But Tinubu's price ceiling, which forces refiners to carry costs they cannot recover in real time, is sound policy. Atiku's plan would cost too much. Tinubu's discount, which achieves the same price reduction, is free. This is not economics. It is political gymnastics.

The certificate question is not a distraction. It is the heart of the matter. The man who cannot provide his certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission, the man facing court cases for certificate forgery, now wants to burden Nigerians with an academic exercise about the difference between a subsidy and a discount. This is a man who has not been able to account for his own academic records, yet he expects the nation to accept his semantic gymnastics on fuel pricing. If he cannot produce a certificate, he cannot lecture Nigerians on the difference between two words that describe the same policy. Nigerians are wiser. They know the difference between a discount and a subsidy is a matter of semantics. They know that the money to reduce fuel prices does not appear from nowhere. It comes from the same Federation Account that funds everything else. They know that when a national oil company forgoes profit, the loss is borne by the public. They know that a thirty-day discount will expire, leaving them with the same prices, the same hardship, and a government that has spent billions of naira on a temporary political gesture.

At the end of the month, the government will have spent more money on this discount than the previous administration spent on subsidy in a year. That is not a saving. That is a spending spree dressed as austerity. And the man who cannot find his certificates is still searching, while the government that mocked Atiku for lacking answers is now implementing his policy under a different name.