THE REFORM THAT NIGERIANS DO NOT BELIEVE: Subsidy, SURE-P, Debt And The Crisis Of Trust

Nigeria is not really arguing about subsidy. Nigeria is arguing about trust, and on that question, everybody is losing. For three years the same fight has played out in different costumes, 2012 versus 2023, Tinubu versus Jonathan, Oyedele versus Obi, reform versus hardship, $7.5 billion versus $100 billion, but strip away the figures and the videos and the graphics and one uncomfortable truth remains, that Nigerians do not believe their leaders with subsidy money because their leaders have never given them a reason to.

The justification for subsidy removal was, in economic terms, almost unanswerable — Nigeria in May 2023 was borrowing to pay for petrol it did not refine, enriching a small cartel of importers and NNPC middlemen while starving schools, hospitals, power and roads, and with debt already at $113.4 billion, reserves falling, and the naira artificially propped up, Oyedele’s warning that without reform the country faced not harder times but collapse was not propaganda but arithmetic

But the critical failure of the Tinubu administration is not its economics, it is its communication and its compassion. You cannot tell a trader in Lagos whose transport fare has tripled that GDP grew 4.43 percent in Q2 2026 and expect applause. You cannot tell a mother whose bag of rice is now a luxury that reserves are above $55 billion and expect gratitude. You cannot tell a young graduate without a job that pension assets now exceed N31 trillion and expect him to feel hopeful. Oyedele’s slide is honest about pain, but honesty without relief is cruelty dressed as policy. The government removed subsidy on Day One, but where was the Day One cushion, where was the visible, nationwide, auditable safety net that would have proved that this time would be different from SURE-P, and that absence is not a PR mistake, it is a moral failure, because reforms without a cushion are not reforms, they are punishments for the poor to pay for the sins of the elite.

Unfortunately , the opposition is not strategic enough .Its favourite attack, that Tinubu protested in 2012 and now did the same thing in 2023, is intellectually lazy, and it misses the real history. As the Ajibare Talks analysis correctly shows, Tinubu did not march in Occupy Nigeria in January 2012. The famous footage is of others. What Tinubu did was write, and what he wrote on 11 January 2012 in The Nation, in a statement titled Removal of Oil Subsidy: President Jonathan Breaks Social Contract With The People, was nuanced. He wrote that though someday Nigeria will have to remove the subsidy, first government needs to clean and throw away the shield of corruption in the NNPC, and that government must modify the sudden and complete removal of the subsidy because the time is not ripe. His objection was not to removal itself. It was to timing, to corruption in the NNPC, and above all to what Jonathan planned to do with the savings. Jonathan created a committee to spend the savings and calm protesters, and Tinubu wrote that this committee is not meant to accomplish anything except to numb public opposition. That committee became SURE-P, the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme, launched in February 2012 with promises of jobs, roads, railways and midwives, and by late 2013 N834bn had accrued to it. What happened next is the strongest evidence for Tinubu’s 2012 warning, and it is a story that still shames the country. Chairman Christopher Kolade, who led SURE-P from 2012 to 2013, told Channels TV he was overruled by those with power to overrule him, that State Implementation Committees were made up mainly of people of political affiliations, that recruits in Abia and Ekiti were supporters of Party A or Party B, and he eventually resigned in frustration. In Katsina, witness Nasiru Ingawa testified under oath in 2016 that N5.7bn was withdrawn in cash, that the governor allegedly said bring the money I approved for you in a memo to my house in the night, we are going to use it for politics, and that half allegedly went to the programme and half to the governor, and former Governor Ibrahim Shema was charged by the EFCC over the money. In Benue, former Governor Gabriel Suswam was charged over N9.79bn in 32 counts covering 2012 to 2015 as part of SURE-P money. In Abuja, Permanent Secretary Clement Iloh, who supervised SURE-P programmes, got N65m from SURE-P contractors into his personal account through fake contracts to his own company, pleaded guilty, and was jailed. The audit by the Centre for Social Justice in 2014, titled Analysing SURE-P in Action, found that out of a N180bn budget for 2012, SURE-P received only N154.4bn, that N25.1bn was never domiciled in the SURE-P account at the Central Bank of Nigeria for unexplained reasons, that N165bn was unaccounted for and funds were untracked, that states did not separate SURE-P funds from normal state funds, and that midwives hired went months without pay in 2014 and 2015. TheCable in May 2016 called it a monumental fraud, saying the only sure thing about it was that its architects would siphon the public’s funds to fatten their own wallets. If you ignore that history, you are not doing criticism, you are doing propaganda. But Tinubu cannot use 2012 as a shield forever, because if he knew in 2012 that subsidy savings could be looted, then he had eleven years to prepare a better system, eleven years to design a transparent, trackable, citizen-verifiable mechanism for the savings. So where is it, and what did he do differently with the savings this time. That is exactly the question Peter Obi would later ask, and it is the question that remains unanswered.

When Peter Obi, in an X post dated 7 November 2026 titled Good Day, Mr President: Nigerians Deserve Accountability, asked what the administration had done with the N15.8 trillion said to have been saved from subsidy removal, the over $100 billion he said had been borrowed, increased tax revenues, and additional government revenues, he was asking the exact question Tinubu asked Jonathan in 2012. The fact that Obi’s $100 billion borrowing figure appears to be wrong does not erase the legitimacy of the question. A viral graphic attributed to the opposition had claimed that in 63 years, 16 Nigerian leaders borrowed N46 trillion, while Tinubu in 3 years borrowed N120 trillion and removed subsidy. Enter the counter-video by commentator Kay Biyi, posted 12 November 2026, whose approach was not to shout but to count. Using Debt Management Office data as at 30 June 2026, he argued that Nigeria’s entire public debt accumulated since 1960 is $120.9 billion, that in June 2023 it was $113.4 billion, that in June 2026 it was $120.9 billion, and that the increase is therefore +$7.5 billion, not $100 billion. He then tested the $100 billion claim for plausibility, that $100 billion in three years would mean $33 billion a year, that Nigeria is a single-B rated sovereign, that its largest Eurobond ever, in November 2025, was $2.35 billion with a record $13 billion order book, that its entire Eurobond portfolio is $15 billion, and that no market on earth lends a single-B sovereign $33 billion a year, every year, for three years, without anyone noticing. He stamped both viral claims FALSE. His correction matters, and the opposition is not innocent in this story, because to claim that 16 leaders in 63 years borrowed N46 trillion while Tinubu in 3 years borrowed N120 trillion is not a mistake, it is a weapon, designed to make a complex debt story sound like a crime, and to claim $100 billion borrowed when the entire debt stock since 1960 is $120.9 billion is not an error of rounding, it is either ignorance of basic DMO data or deliberate inflation for political effect. This is dangerous, because when the opposition exaggerates, it gives the government an easy excuse to dismiss all criticism as lies, and the government can then say see, they lied about $100 billion, so they are lying about hunger too, and the real suffering gets buried under fake figures. Opposition without facts is not opposition, it is noise, and noise helps the government more than it hurts it. If Obi and others want to hold Tinubu accountable, they must do what Tinubu did in 2012, write, document, cite, and propose an alternative. Shouting $100 billion without evidence is the same as shouting SURE-P will work without controls. It insults the intelligence of the very people they claim to defend. But correction is not accountability, and you cannot answer Where is the N15.8 trillion with We did not borrow $100 billion. That is evasion, and Nigerians, who watched SURE-P money disappear, know evasion when they see it. The critical question the administration has still not answered, in a way ordinary Nigerians can see and verify, is show us, line by line, project by project, state by state, what the subsidy savings built. Until that list exists, not in a press release but on a public dashboard, with locations, contractors, costs, and completion status, the ghost of SURE-P will haunt every reform, and the debt debate will remain not really about debt but about trust. When a citizen cannot tell whether the government borrowed $7.5 billion or $100 billion, accountability itself becomes impossible, because misinformation, whether deliberate or mistaken, does not just confuse, it paralyses, it makes it impossible for voters to reward good performance or punish bad performance, because they cannot agree on what performance is.

Put together, these stories tell one larger Nigerian story, and the interpretative core of the controversy is that everybody is telling half the truth. The government is telling half the truth, that the reforms were necessary, that the alternative was collapse, that the regional market idea is brilliant, but they are hiding the other half, that the pain was not managed, that the savings are not transparent, and that the relief is not visible. The opposition is telling half the truth, that the pain is real, that the savings must be accounted for, that the borrowing must be scrutinised, but they are hiding the other half, that the borrowing figures are inflated, that the 2012 history is distorted, and that no credible alternative has been offered. The governors and the power brokers are telling half the truth, that they want to serve, that they want to lead the Senate, that they want to choose successors for stability, but they are hiding the other half, that ambition, when it becomes the controlling desire, unites enemies, invites court rulings, and turns governance into a fight for the next office. The public is caught in the middle, told to endure harder times before things get better by a government that has not shown them what better looks like, told to believe $100 billion borrowed by an opposition that has not shown them the proof, and told to choose between Hope and Wike, between yes and no, by men who are fighting for crowns while the people are fighting for survival. This is why Nigeria’s reform debate feels like a shouting contest, not a policy debate, because it is not a debate about policy at all, it is a debate about credibility, and credibility, once lost in SURE-P, in Skye Bank, in NNPC, in every failed promise, cannot be regained by slides, by GDP figures, or by viral videos. It can only be regained by one thing, visible proof. Proof that subsidy savings built a school in Sokoto, a road in Enugu, a hospital in Borno, a rail line in Lagos. Proof that debt is published, tracked, and tied to assets. Proof that bankers who steal depositors’ money go to jail, not to re-arraignment number four. Proof that succession is decided by voters, not by a coalition of the ambitious and the aggrieved. Until then, Oyedele will keep presenting slides, Obi will keep posting figures, Kay Biyi will keep debunking, Ajibare Talks will keep correcting history, Wike will keep saying no, and Hope will keep climbing, and the ordinary Nigerian will keep asking the only question that matters, if the reform is working, why am I still suffering. That question is not ignorance, it is not opposition, it is not Obidient or APC bot, it is the verdict of a people who have heard this story before, in 2012 with SURE-P, and are waiting, this time, for a different ending.