Governors across the federation had braced for widespread civil unrest following President Bola Tinubu’s announcement of fuel subsidy removal in May 2023, deploying security agencies and convening emergency meetings in anticipation of massive protests that ultimately never materialized.
AbdulRahman Abdulrazaq, the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum and Governor of Kwara State, made this disclosure during a Sallah homage at President Tinubu’s Lagos residence, where Vice President Kashim Shettima and other state governors were present.
The revelation offered a rare glimpse into the anxiety that gripped state governments immediately after the President’s inaugural policy decision. According to Abdulrazaq, governors first learned of the impending removal through calls from the National Security Adviser and the Director General of the Department of State Services while on a trip to China.
We went into panic mode, Abdulrazaq recounted. I sent a message to my colleagues at the NGF and nobody wanted to hear that.
The governors present in China, including Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, resolved to seek a meeting with President Tinubu to argue against the policy. However, when the President invited them to dinner, the encounter took an unexpected turn.
We sat down and listened to his vision for Nigeria and, at the end of the day, we could not even bring up the topic, Abdulrazaq said. We did not know whether he had gotten security reports about why we were coming for dinner, but we could not raise the issue.
Returning to their rooms, the governors resolved to implement the policy and immediately began preparing for what they believed would be a public backlash. We advised each other to convene State Security Council meetings because we were expecting serious riots, Abdulrazaq explained, noting that there had been protests over bad governance and lesser issues even before the subsidy removal.
Everybody was told to secure their state. And on that day, nothing happened. There were no riots, there were no protests anywhere, he said, attributing the calm to public shock at the audacity of the decision.
Reflecting on the fiscal outcomes three years later, Abdulrazaq painted a markedly different picture from the initial fears. He explained that before the subsidy removal, states were left with as little as one hundred to two hundred million naira after paying salaries from their Federation Account allocation amounts barely sufficient to construct one kilometer of road. That situation, he said, had forced states into bonds and loans to fund infrastructure projects.
Today, states no longer need to borrow money or issue bonds. In fact, we are reducing our debt burden, Abdulrazaq stated. In my own state, we have reduced our debt by forty percent. Some states have also cleared their debts.
The Kwara governor further noted that most states now pay a minimum wage close to one hundred thousand naira, exceeding the national statutory minimum of seventy thousand naira. He urged President Tinubu to initiate discussions toward formally raising the national minimum wage to at least one hundred thousand naira.
Abdulrazaq described the subsidy removal as a decision that only one percent of politicians would have the courage to make. He added that the nation had benefited immensely from the policy, which has redirected funds previously lost to smuggling and fraud into critical sectors of the economy.
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