The Chairman of the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), Zacch Adedeji, has said Nigeria’s petrol subsidy bill could have risen to about ₦53 trillion and the naira could have weakened to roughly ₦3,500 to the dollar had President Bola Tinubu not moved to end the subsidy regime and overhaul the country’s foreign exchange system.
Adedeji made the claim in an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme, where he defended the administration’s economic reforms, including the removal of petrol subsidy in May 2023 and the unification of Nigeria’s multiple exchange rate windows.
According to Adedeji, Tinubu inherited an economy weighed down by an unsustainable subsidy regime, an underperforming oil sector and a narrow tax base. He argued that retaining the subsidy would have placed a far heavier burden on public finances, particularly given pressures from global energy markets and geopolitical tensions linked to the Iran crisis.
“All the good results that I will reel out soon come as a result of that courageous decision [subsidy removal]. So, it is not a mistake; it is the best thing that has happened to this country,” Adedeji said.
He described subsidy retention as effectively borrowing money to buy petrol at a higher price only to sell it to consumers at a loss, calling it fiscally unsustainable. He also pushed back on suggestions that the government should have built fiscal buffers before removing the subsidy.
Adedeji pointed to a jump in monthly allocations to the three tiers of government from about ₦700 billion in 2023 to roughly ₦4.5 trillion currently as evidence the reforms were paying off. He further claimed Nigeria was approaching net-exporter status for Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), a milestone he said had not been reached in about four decades.
The NRS chairman urged Nigerians to judge the administration’s economic decisions on their long-term merits rather than emotion, and challenged prospective challengers to the Tinubu administration ahead of the 2027 elections to articulate what they would have done differently.
“What the President deserves now is support and commendation for being a statesman and not a politician,” he said.
