By Our reporter 4.10.2026
Nigeria’s minister of state for petroleum resources, Heineken Lokpobiri, said the promise to revisit petrol subsidy, made by the African Democratic Congress and Nigerian Democratic Congress presidential candidates was financially unsustainable for Nigeria.
ADC’s Atiku Abubakar and NDC’s Peter Obi both pledged to restore petrol subsidy in their campaign for the 2027 presidential election and those promises, seem to be unnerving the President Bola Tinubu administration.
But Lopkobiri while speaking at the weekend with media representatives said Nigeria no longer afford to subsidies petrol and other products as the it was taking up a huge chunk of the revenue accruing to the government.
“Where would the money come from?” he asked.
“The money is expected to come from the same oil sector. The point I am trying to make is that if that decision was not made on subsidy removal, Nigeria would have been like Venezuela.”
He argued that government would have been spending N18.4 billion daily on petrol subsidy payments according to projects. Adding that the payment of the subsidy contributed to the struggles by the defunct Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to meet its financial obliations to government: “You recall that NNPC never paid any dividend.
“NNPC never made any profit at all. What they were doing was shipping out crude and shipping in refined products. NNPC was the sole importer of refined products,” he said.
“If you say you own 60 per cent of a business, you also have to pay 60 per cent of the cost of doing that. That is the cash call.But before this government came, NNPC couldn’t pay its cash call. Today, NNPC is not owing any cash call.”