Former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor and Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has attributed Nigeria’s ongoing economic difficulties to the country’s failure to remove fuel subsidies over a decade ago.
Sanusi, who served as CBN Governor from 2009 to 2014, made the remarks while speaking at the Oxford Global Think Tank Leadership Conference on Tuesday. He said Nigeria could have avoided the current severe inflation and economic distress if the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan had been allowed to end the subsidy in 2011.
“If Nigerians had allowed the Jonathan government to remove the subsidy in 2011, there would have been pain. But that pain would have been a very tiny fraction of what we are facing today. This is the cause of the delay,” he stated.
Sanusi explained that the CBN had previously assessed the likely impact of removing the fuel subsidy and concluded that inflation would not have exceeded 30 percent if the policy had been implemented earlier.
“At that time, we worked out the numbers in the Central Bank. I stood up and put my credibility on the line and said, remove the subsidy today. Inflation moves up from 11 percent to 13 percent, I will bring it down in a year. We would not have had 30-something percent inflation,” he said.
Sanusi further noted the irony that those who led the Occupy Nigeria protests, which opposed subsidy removal, ultimately inherited the problem and had to implement the reform later.
The former CBN governor also cited security concerns during the Boko Haram insurgency as a key reason why the Jonathan administration compromised on subsidy removal.
“The only reason the government compromised at that time and did 50 percent to 100 percent was Boko Haram,” Sanusi said. “There were thousands of Nigerians on the streets in Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, and other cities. There was a fear that one day one of these suicide bombers would go to these Nigerians and detonate bombs, and you would have 200 corpses; it would no longer be about subsidy.”
He, however, commended Jonathan for his determination to implement the reform, saying: “You have to give President Jonathan the credit. He was determined to do it, but at the end of the day, the compromise was made to save Nigerian lives.”
In his inaugural address on May 29, 2023, President Bola Tinubu officially announced the removal of Nigeria’s decades-old fuel subsidy, marking the start of a broad economic reform agenda.
The subsidy, introduced in the 1970s to keep fuel affordable, had become a significant burden on public finances. Tinubu’s policy aimed to stabilise government finances but triggered sharp increases in petrol prices, transportation costs, and food prices, deepening the cost-of-living crisis. By 2024, inflation had surged above 30 percent, and nearly half of Nigerians were living in poverty.
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