The Presidential Candidate of the New Nigeria People’s Party, Suleiman Dikwa, has called on the Federal Government to move beyond the long-running fuel subsidy debate and redirect public spending towards investments that create jobs, generate foreign exchange and build productive assets.
Dikwa made the call in a statement titled, “Beyond the Subsidy Trap: Why the Atiku-Tinubu Debate Fails Nigeria’s Economic Future,” and made available to our correspondent on Tuesday, where he described the positions of President Bola Tinubu on subsidy removal and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s proposal for a “redesigned subsidy” as “two sides of the same bankrupt coin.”
He argued that neither subsidy removal without alternatives nor a return to petrol subsidies would address the country’s structural economic problems. “While one equates reform with withdrawing public expenditure, the other equates relief with burning cash at retail fuel pumps; he said neither of the arguments builds the economy,” Dikwa stated.
According to him, Nigeria had relied on petrol subsidies for about four decades as a substitute for failures in public infrastructure, particularly in power, transportation and logistics.
Dikwa said, “Nigerians on the other hand are not debating whether to spend public money. It is debating what public money should create.”
The NNPP candidate identified agricultural wastage, food imports and ineffective utilisation of donor funding as some of the structural challenges draining the Nigerian economy.
He cited the over N12tn reportedly lost annually to agricultural pre- and post-harvest wastage, huge food import bills that drain foreign exchange on products that could be produced locally, as well as billions of dollars in donor funding without corresponding self-sustaining industrial infrastructure.
“No functional industrial power in modern history developed through pure laissez-faire passivity or consumptive cash burn, rather, they deploy targeted subsidies to build global dominance, secure supply chains, and protect domestic purchasing power.”
Dikwa cited the United States, China and the European Union as examples of economies that had deployed targeted state support to strengthen domestic production.
He said the United States built its agricultural strength through measures including the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act and targeted Farm Bills, which supported grain storage, price stabilisation and export credits.
He added that China’s dominance in electric vehicles was not achieved by reducing retail petrol prices but through state co-investment in battery research and development, critical mineral refining and manufacturing.
Dikwa also noted that the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy was designed to support rural cold chains, processing modernisation and export quality assurance rather than subsidise retail bread.
“The global standard is not ‘no subsidy.’ The global standard is subsidy that creates surplus. Palliatives offer the illusion of intervention, just as fuel discounts offer the illusion of relief. Neither builds an economy,” he said.
Dikwa warned that Nigeria could not afford to remain caught between what he called “punitive austerity” and “refurbished price controls” ahead of the 2027 elections.
