30 months after President Bola Tinubu removed petrol subsidy and introduced other sweeping economic reforms, the Federal Government has spent N30.64tn as government expenditure to ease effect of its policies, while the policies generated N15.8tn in savings for the Federation.
The government said its total incremental expenditure between June 2023 and December 2025 was N30.64tn, exceeding the N20.4tn in additional resources available to the Federal Government from subsidy savings, higher revenue and borrowing by N10.24tn, or 50.2 per cent.
This show that the removal of petrol subsidy created significant fiscal space but did not produce a pool of idle cash for the Federal Government.
Instead, the government said the resources were absorbed by rising wage costs, debt servicing, infrastructure spending and other obligations arising from the same economic reforms.
Put differently, for every N100 the Federal Government generated in additional resources, it spent about N150, leaving about one-third of the expenditure to be funded from its existing revenue base.
