By Precious Mark
The presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, has pledged to reinstate the petrol subsidy if elected, dismissing claims by the Federal Government that subsidy payments have been completely eliminated.
Speaking on Tuesday during an appearance on Arise News, Sowore argued that the government is still quietly subsidizing petrol and the national currency while falsely presenting a total removal to the public.
“I will bring back subsidy…In the first place, they are still paying subsidy; they’re just changing the name of what they call it,” Sowore stated.
“They are subsidizing not only petrol, because they don’t have enough and can’t produce locally, they are also subsidizing the Naira. The reason the Naira is at a certain rate to a dollar is because it’s been quietly and secretly subsidized,” he added.
Critiquing the economic rationale behind the policy shift, the AAC candidate maintained that social safety cushions exist globally and that Nigeria’s previous framework benefited wealthy importers through trade concessions far more than ordinary citizens.
“There’s no country in the world that doesn’t subsidize their poor,” he noted.
“In fact, the people that get the most subsidy in Nigeria is not the poor, it’s the rich. All the people who bring in foreign goods and services, go and look at their waivers and customs. You will know who is getting a real subsidy compared to the people who are getting 10 Naira from each gallon of petrol that was taken away from them,” Sowore said.
Sowore warned that the abrupt removal of the fuel subsidy severely damaged national economic stability, pushing millions of citizens into severe economic hardship and multidimensional poverty.
Pointing to recent global food security assessments, he highlighted Nigeria’s inclusion on the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) list of nations experiencing critical food shortages despite its status as a major oil producer.
“Immediately you remove subsidy, look at where your economy tanked. Your Naira also went down,” Sowore said.
“The Food and Agricultural Organization regards Nigeria as one of the places where you need food in 2026. We are about the only country producing oil that is on FAO’s list of countries that has food shortages, but they don’t want to tell you all this because it’s all about optics, and optics don’t feed people.”