We won’t return to ‘addictive’ fuel subsidy – Tinubu tells Nigerians

President Bola Tinubu has ruled out a return to Nigeria’s petrol subsidy regime, warning against calls to reverse his administration’s economic reforms.

Tinubu spoke in his Independence Day address to Nigerians on Thursday, as the country marked its 66th anniversary, while defending the reforms introduced since he assumed office in 2023.

The President acknowledged that the reforms had been difficult and that their “side effects were real”, but said abandoning them would amount to returning to policies that failed to address the country’s underlying economic problems.

“Our reforms did not create the weaknesses in our economy. They confronted them,” Tinubu said.

Tinubu said some “influential but regressive voices” were calling for a return to subsidy arrangements, describing such demands as an attempt to abandon the economic reforms.

“Now, as certain influential but regressive voices would have us abandon the treatment and return ourselves to the abuse of addictive subsidies, we must resist their siren song,” he said.

He said Nigerians should remember why the reforms were introduced and how far the country had come since then.

Using a cancer-treatment analogy, Tinubu compared the Nigerian economy before the reforms to a patient whose condition had been allowed to worsen while successive governments focused on easing the symptoms rather than addressing the underlying problems.

“Nigeria was like a sick patient who receives the terrible news that he has cancer,” he said.

“His doctor explains that the treatment will be difficult and painful, but that it offers a strong prospect of recovery. The patient has a choice. He can begin treatment, endure its discomfort and fight the disease. Or he can ask only for morphine, dull the pain and leave the cancer to spread.

“For too long, Nigeria’s leaders chose morphine while praying for a miracle that never came,” the president noted