The subsidy trap: What Nigeria would be reversing, By Akeem Bello

Countries often learn an old economic lesson only after considerable pain: you cannot reconstruct an economy without disturbing the arrangements that held the old one together. Serious reforms frequently impose immediate costs before their benefits become visible. The difficulty is that the pain is immediate and personal, while the benefits are often delayed and difficult to attribute. Nigeria’s renewed debate over petrol subsidy, following former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s declaration that he would restore subsidy if elected president in 2027, therefore deserves to be treated as an economic question rather than another partisan quarrel. Indeed, the emergence of a serious policy debate this early around a forthcoming presidential election may itself be one of the encouraging signs that Nigeria’s democracy is gradually developing, as voters increasingly encounter competing ideas about how the economy should be managed rather than only competing personalities.