THE aim of a leader should be the welfare of the people whom he leads. I have used ‘welfare’ to denote the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the people—Chief Obafemi Awolowo in his 1967 address to Western leaders of thought in Ibadan. On that premise, today’s intervention serves two purposes: a response to President Bola Tinubu’s Independence Day Address and a continuation of my structural amendment to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s production-subsidy proposal.
Mr President told us that “the emergency treatment is over”, and now begins the “age of prosperity”. I submit that while Nigeria may have achieved macroeconomic stabilisation, inclusive prosperity cannot exist without energy availability and affordability at the grassroots. I will show this through the ledger of three Nigerian teachers, using illustrative profiles with plausible salary benchmarks.
Fundamentals
Energy availability is reliable access to electricity, petrol, diesel, or compressed natural gas (CNG) to power households, transportation, and productive activities. It is central to energy security, where supply meets demand through distribution networks. Energy affordability is the capacity to pay for energy without sacrificing food, healthcare, housing and other necessities. This requires bringing the structural cost of essential energy within reach, not merely raising salaries. For a poor but resource-endowed Nigeria, the security and equity dimensions of the energy trilemma—expressed practically as availability and affordability—are urgent. Sustainability matters too, but these two are foundational.
The International Energy Agency’s July report projects coal at 32.94 per cent of global electricity generation in 2026—the largest single source even as renewables collectively overtake it. The global system still depends on a diverse energy mix. Should Nigeria not?
The grassroots middle class under the lens
Mrs Yewande Tinubu, a Level 10 Accounting teacher at Iragbiji Grammar School, Osun State, earns ₦160,000 monthly. Mallam Ibrahim Shettima, a Level 9 English teacher at Jere High School, Borno State, earns ₦150,000. Miss Chinwe Okeke, a Level 8 Chemistry teacher at Aguleri Community High School, Anambra State, earns ₦135,000. Parents entrust these teachers with educating their children—the future leaders of Nigeria. Their work continues after school: marking scripts, preparing lessons and researching curricula. They pay taxes and represent Nigeria’s productive grassroots middle class.
Mr President, here is the brutal reality of your abrupt first-day declaration that “fuel subsidy is gone”, before sufficient protections had been put in place for workers like these. Let us use conservative assumptions. Over 22 school days, each teacher commutes five kilometres each way, totalling 220 kilometres monthly. In a 2005 Toyota Corolla averaging 7.8 litres/100 km, that requires 17.16 litres of petrol. At home, 82 hours of professional work monthly on an “I better pass my neighbour” generator assumed to consume 0.60 litres/hour requires another 49.2 litres. At ₦1,350 per litre, generation costs ₦66,420 monthly and commuting ₦23,166. Each teacher spends ₦89,586 monthly on 66.36 litres of petrol for school and preparatory work at home—before food, rent, healthcare, phone and internet data.
Unreliable grid supply makes petrol generators necessary. Teachers servicing car loans may struggle to finance solar-inverter systems. CNG conversion costs ₦350,000–₦600,000—two to five months of salary—and CNG access remains sparse in these locations. In these illustrative profiles, Miss Okeke’s productive-energy costs consume 66.4% of her gross salary. She survives partly on remittances from her big brother, Chinedu, in the UK while awaiting admission to a foreign university—one more young science teacher preparing to join the brain drain. For Mallam Shettima, with two wives and four young children, energy consumes 59.7 per cent of his salary; for Mrs Tinubu, a single mother of three who lost her husband to kidney disease, 56.0 per cent. Both would need additional income, compromising the attention they can devote to their classrooms.
For a more conservative test, suppose Shettima rides a fuel-efficient Bajaj Boxer. At 55 km/litre, his monthly commuting bill falls from ₦23,166 to ₦5,400, yet his productive-energy cost remains ₦71,820—47.9 per cent of salary. The motorcycle lowers cost but increases road-crash exposure. Mr President, how exactly do you plan to bring prosperity to these teachers?
Energy policy and productivity
This is why I support Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s proposal for production subsidy for locally refined petrol. However, my amendment remains critical: do not begin with the refinery; begin with Nigerians. Identify productive activities society has a structural reason to protect. For these teachers, the goal should be to halve their productive-energy burden—from ₦89,586 to about ₦44,793 monthly. That reduces it to 33.2% of Miss Okeke’s gross salary, 29.9 per cent of Mallam Shettima’s and 28.0 per cent of Mrs Tinubu’s—still substantial, but far below 56 per cent to 66 per cent.
That reduction should come first from improved energy-system efficiency; lower production costs across the value chain; functioning public refineries; and tax-deductible productive-energy costs—then, where necessary, targeted production support for verified users.
Together, these three teachers require about 199 litres monthly. Applied to 937,000 public primary and secondary teachers, based on 2022 UBEC data, this benchmark translates to about 2.07 million litres of PMS daily. Dangote’s 39.9 per cent PMS output share for the year to June 2026—against the IMF’s earlier 55 per cent assumption—implies about 32,700 barrels/day of crude-equivalent throughput. The pilot could also include an assumed 271,800 eligible non-VIP police personnel, whose mobility, communication and power needs underpin community security, especially around vulnerable schools.
Assume a 30-litre monthly PMS cap per officer—roughly half the teacher benchmark because some police mobility is institutionally supported. That adds about 4,300 crude-equivalent barrels/day, taking the combined requirement to about 37,000 crude-equivalent barrels/day. Under the pilot, any crude-price discount should apply only to the crude-equivalent share attributable to verified eligible PMS volumes. Such a mechanism may require amendments to the Petroleum Industry Act. Supported PMS should be tracked through custody-transfer metering and digital reconciliation from refinery gate to participating filling stations across the 774 LGAs, with eligible litres redeemed by verified beneficiaries.
The same architecture could extend to verified diesel needs for large farms and factories. Fiscal exposure would be limited by capping both eligible volumes and support per litre. As grid reliability improves, generator dependence falls; as CNG infrastructure expands, government’s exposure should decline further.
Admonition
Mr President, you warned against ‘certain influential but regressive voices’ seeking a return to the ‘abuse of addictive subsidies’. That framing creates a false binary. Nigeria need not choose between yesterday’s corrupt universal subsidy and today’s exposure of low-income productive citizens to international energy prices. Band A customers pay about ₦209.50 per kWh before VAT for a minimum 20-hour daily service commitment—roughly the July 2026 Texas residential average at current exchange rates—yet Texas has no service-band rationing structure. Petrol at ₦1,400–₦1,500 per litre likewise rivals or exceeds prices in parts of the United States. This is utterly preposterous. Nigeria’s lower labour costs should offset part of the domestic energy-cost structure.
The policy question is: how much of today’s price reflects legitimate costs versus power-system inefficiency, underutilisation of mature oilfields, poor infrastructure, financing dysfunction, system losses, weak competition and institutional failure. Why should those failures be transferred to workers paid in naira? That is an assignment for your energy and economic teams. Advanced economies combine market pricing with targeted relief for productive uses. The U.S. provides fuel-tax relief for qualifying farm and off-highway uses; the UK permits rebated fuel for qualifying agricultural uses. The principle is targeted support—not universal subsidy.
The statecraft question is: who should be supported, for what productive purpose, in what quantity, at what cost, for how long and with what verification and monitoring?
Until your administration shifts from macroeconomic rhetoric to grassroots energy availability and affordability, any proclamation of national prosperity will remain a dangerous delusion.
Credit: Nigerian Tribune