President Bola Tinubu has likened calls for a return to fuel subsidy to asking Moses to return to Egypt, insisting that Nigeria cannot afford to continue paying the subsidy.
Tinubu made the comparison on Monday while addressing members of the City Boy Movement, saying the country risked going bankrupt if it continued to bear the cost of the policy.
“With your ideas, I came and I removed subsidy the first day. No, Nigeria will go bankrupt. You have nothing left to pay subsidy,” the President said.
He said he was aware that his political opponents had promised to restore the subsidy but maintained that the country must not return to its previous economic path.
“I listen to my political opponents promising a return to subsidy,” he said.
Drawing from his religious studies, Tinubu referred to the biblical and Quranic accounts of Moses and Musa leading the Israelites out of Egypt, using the story to argue against reversing the direction he had chosen for Nigeria.
“Most of all, sometimes I remember my scriptural studies, both in the Bible and in the Holy Koran. When Moses and Musa left Egypt, they faced the challenge and the Red Sea parted and gave way.
“You cannot ask Moses to go back to Egypt. We will campaign with ideas and original thoughts and deep thinking to move this country forward. With your energy, your support, never will we go back to Egypt,” Tinubu added.
Tinubu removed the petrol subsidy during his inauguration on May 29, 2023, when he declared that “fuel subsidy is gone”. The decision triggered an increase in petrol prices and raised the cost of transportation and other goods and services.
The policy has remained a major point of debate amid the cost-of-living pressures facing Nigerians, with opposition figures and other political actors questioning aspects of the government’s economic reforms.
In a related development, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, warned earlier this month that restoring petrol subsidy could push the pump price to at least N2,000 per litre and weaken the naira to about N3,000 per dollar within months. He argued that subsidy payments would put additional pressure on government revenue and the economy.
The Federal Government has also defended a recent intervention by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited to cushion the impact of rising petrol prices, insisting that the measure was not a reversal of the subsidy-removal policy.