• Nigeria needs credible safety nets and immediate relief—not another inadequately costed petrol subsidy
By Gloria Fraser
Any presidential candidate promising to restore petrol subsidy without publishing its cost, funding source and safeguards is not presenting an economic policy. He is selling an illusion to a distressed electorate.
Professor Farooq Kperogi’s defence of Atiku Abubakar’s proposed subsidy arrangement is eloquent and politically entertaining, but its central argument remains economically unconvincing.
Kperogi appears delighted that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his supporters are supposedly “squirming in discomfort like cats stranded on a hot zinc roof.” That is colourful imagery, but public policy is not judged by how uncomfortable it makes an opponent. It is judged by its cost, sustainability, beneficiaries, safeguards and consequences.
