When the Media Office of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar accused the Tinubu administration last week of engineering one of the “most brazen financial scandals” in Nigeria’s petroleum sector, many dismissed it as political noise.
But beyond the partisan colouring, the figures now emerging are too staggering — and too scandalous — to ignore.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) reportedly spent ₦17.5 trillion in just one year on what it loosely labels “energy security,” “under-recovery,” and “pipeline protection.”
Put differently, the Tinubu government has spent in 12 months nearly the same amount Nigeria expended on fuel subsidy over twelve years — a national programme that actually cushioned millions of Nigerians.
Under President Bola Tinubu, fuel prices have prevailed above ₦1,300 per litre in several localities across the country. Government insists subsidy is gone. Yet NNPCL’s financials for 2024 reveal:
- ₦7.13 trillion spent on “energy-security costs to keep petrol prices stable.”
- ₦8.67 trillion spent on “under-recovery.”
These vague categories — “energy cost” and “under-recovery” — are, as Atiku’s office put it, little more than new balablu nomenclatures deployed to disguise the fact that subsidy never ended; it simply mutated.
The NNPCL accounts show that “energy security” expenses arise from the difference between the exchange rate used to compute PMS (petrol) ex-coastal prices and the rate at import settlement. This amount is deducted from what should go into the Federation Account each month — effectively a covert subsidy.
In 2023, this same item cost ₦4.8 trillion. In 2024, it ballooned to ₦7.1 trillion — the highest subsidy-related outlay in twenty years, dwarfing the previous record of ₦3.36 trillion in 2022.
How does subsidy cost more after it was “removed”? This is not incompetence. This is not policy failure. This is state capture. The subsidy they claimed was gone is back — bigger, darker, hidden in the pockets of faceless cartels.
These are not technical terms. They are smoke screens. If subsidy was removed, what exactly is being “recovered”? If subsidy ended, what “stability” is being funded with trillions? If subsidy died, why are its ghosts collecting more money than ever before?
Data by the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) shows that the highest amount spent on subsidy by the Nigerian government between 2005 and 2021 was incurred in 2011, when a sum of N2.1 trillion was paid.
In 2022, however, the Nigerian government paid N3.36 trillion as fuel subsidies, meaning that between 2005 and 2022, the highest subsidy paid stood at N3.36 trillion. With N4.8 trillion spent in 2023, the N7.1 trillion recorded for 2024 becomes the highest ever spent between 2005 and 2024, a twenty-year period.
The administration has repeatedly justified subsidy removal on grounds of affordability. Nigerians were pressed to “tighten their belts” and absorb historic hardship. Yet the same government disbursed ₦17.5 trillion — an amount capable of revolutionising the power sector, rehabilitating refineries, or funding universal healthcare — to opaque contracts allegedly linked to cronies.
The question writes itself: Is this governance or grand larceny disguised as public expenditure?
This raises fundamental questions of public trust and national integrity:
Who are the companies awarded these multi-trillion-naira contracts? What exactly justifies the 38.7% jump in “energy-cost” from ₦6.25 trillion in 2024 to ₦8.67 trillion in 2025? Why is pipeline security suddenly costlier than a decade-long subsidy that served 200 million Nigerians?
Where are the audits, parliamentary reviews, and cost-validation documents for these humongous contracts?
The Nigerian public cannot continue to suffer crushing inflation, punitive fuel prices, an unending collapse of the naira, and widespread hunger — only for a select circle of political allies to pocket trillions under the guise of “pipeline security.” How do you justify that an administration that presides over this level of fiscal recklessness is garnering fake moral authority to demand sacrifice from its people?
It is now evident that Tinubu did not end subsidy; the administration merely redirected the proceeds from the entire nation to a privileged oil cartel orbiting the Presidency.
What must happen now is that the government must immediately:
1. Publish the full list of companies and beneficiaries.
2. Disclose the scope, milestones, and tenure of each contract.
3. Subject the ₦17.5 trillion expenditure to an independent forensic audit.
4. Suspend further payments pending the audit outcome.
5. Explain how this colossal spending aligns with national priorities in a season of unprecedented economic suffering.
Nigerians deserve transparency, not deception. Leadership, not cronyism. Prudence, not plunder. And they deserve a government that places national interest above private enrichment.
This ₦17.5 trillion “energy-security” and “fuel under-recovery” bill is not just a financial irregularity — it is a moral indictment of the Tinubu administration and a clarion call for full, uncompromising accountability.
This is no longer about politics. It is about survival. It is about justice. And it is about forcing accountability from those who believe Nigeria is their personal ATM.
(IFEANYI IZEZE writes from Abuja. Contacts: iizeze@yahoo.com; +234-8033043009)