September 2025
Present-Day Snapshot: 2023 Fuel Subsidy Removal
Since the prattle of Nigeria’s fuel subsidy, I haven’t dipped my pen in ink to speak truth about the smoke that stung our eyes and choked our voices during those turbulent times that still hang heavy in the air today. It was more than just a shift in policy; to concerned stakeholders and comrades alike, it remains a moment of national reckoning. Now, rather than merely recount events, I want to bridge the silences and lay bare the fragments of thought in a way global pro-socialists will recognize as part of an ongoing struggle we all share. Nigeria, with its over 200 million resilient souls, remains a fascinating yet, I'd say, deeply contradictory place: a nation so rich in oil, yet so often found scraping the barrel; a democracy many claim is growing, yet one repeatedly starved by economic prescriptions and rubber stamped in Washington. What happened and keeps happening with fuel subsidies is more than a story: it's now a parable of class and resistance.
In May 2023, Nigeria’s skies were doused in real-time austerity. Lagos commuters stood stranded beneath the heavy air of Molue bus stops, watching transport fares double in real time. Street hawkers were caught in the slow grinding inflation and exhaustion and were muttering curses. As we all got entangled in the fishing nets of the ruling class, meagre-paid nurses were made to trek miles to hospitals that felt forever to reach. Petrol stations dotting the rutted streets and highways were either shuttered or enveloped in unfading queues stretching for blocks. All of this took a weird shape after a single declarative statement by Nigeria’s newly sworn-in president Bola Ahmed Tinubu – who won under the umbrella party All Progressives Congress – which announced the removal of unpopular fuel subsidies, not as policy nuance, but as a crack in the foundational structure of economic survival and social stability for the Nigerian working class and poor. Yet this was no unprecedented break, but rather a continuation of a long historical event from the IMF-imposed structural adjustments of the 1990s to the 2012 general strike that paralyzed the country and countless other moments when austerity descended as inevitability rather than choice. Through it all, the formal structures of labour movements, from the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to militant oil unions, have remained more than simply reactive institutions. They became spaces of political memory and anticipation. Their opposition to subsidy removal has not been reduced to protests alone: it is, in fact, more deeply seated, as a struggle over the meaning of survival under capitalism, and a refusal to relinquish the demand for popular economic sovereignty. Let’s peg Marx’s theory of class antagonism into this situation and gain a more nuanced understanding. In this theory, capital, in its endless drive to extract profit, inevitably produces crises, displacements, austerity—and it's the working class that bears the brunt of the rippling effects. One must know that the resistance isn’t just about better wages or cheaper fuel, it is about survival. Take the fight over fuel subsidies. Would it be an isolated issue? Again and again, capital creates the mess, and then asks the rest of us to clean it up. This period of time brings to memory the many years of political decisions that have always placed international financial priorities above the daily living conditions of ordinary Nigerians; such decisions the working class has long resisted.
Root Causes: IMF, SAPs, Neoliberalism, Corruption
To understand the roots of Nigeria’s subsidy crisis, you must take a step back to the 1980s, when the country’s economy was first foot-chained to the prescriptions of global financial institutions. In those times when oil prices collapsed and foreign debt was mounting, Nigeria turned to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for succor. These monetary systems agreed but in return for bailouts, the country had no choice but to adopt Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) – a neoliberal blueprint created by the IMF that made a strong request for currency devaluation, cuts in public sector workforce and financing, and deregulation of its downstream oil. Bit by bit, these IMF and World Bank-tailored reforms were pitched and sold to us as the only path to bringing to fruition efficiency and economic growth the country had longed for. But in reality, they stripped the country of its role in controlling its development, dismantled price controls, and handed critical industries – from agriculture to energy – to private interests, many of them linked to the ruling elite. Without doubt, it’s within this frame of forced dependency and the enrichment of the elite that the current fuel subsidy crisis eats deep into the roots. This understanding only forces the ordinary Nigerians to carry the cross of difficult decisions placed beyond their ability to obtain.
The state-owned refineries, once seen as effigies of national self-reliance and wealth, fell into disrepair. No new ones were built. With that swept under the carpet, Nigeria began importing refined fuel from Western big hats who were the fat funders to IMF and World Bank, despite being one of the world’s largest crude producers. As such, through each subsidy removal from former military presidents Babangida’s era to Obasanjo, and to the elected ones Jonathan, and now Tinubu; the popular narrative that the market will correct itself remains a steady storm in the ocean. Why so? From 1999 up to the 2023 subsidy removal sores, the leaders on the steering wheel pummeled the motif, “subsidies are wasteful,” and their removal will “free up funds for infrastructure and social investment” which the country badly needs to fix the current trend of rising poverty, maternal mortality, and poor social investment. But for the average Nigerian like me who eats 1-0-1 or 1-0-0, this promise has proven to be a hollow echo. The fact remains that roads sit in their dilapidated state. Public hospitals are tagged as dumping grounds, or at the very least, facilities where essential medicines are out of stock. And for most of us whose parents scrambled to pay for our education at modest primary and secondary schools, the armpits of public education are wildly stuck with unwashed cloth. Without being affected in any way, the number of the country’s billionaires grew exponentially, as oil marketers profit from arbitrage, and politicians benefit from unholy subsidy regimes.
From here, what SAPs were able to achieve was not development but dependency. One must remember that such dependency on external borrowing and imported goods, and a sharply increasing inequality was piercing through the capture of public wealth by private hands. In this context, however, labour’s resistance is an understandable demand not just for the economic benefit of lower prices, but for the right to exist in a system that continually pushes them out. The historical context, therefore, helps explain to us why labour unions and grassroots actors have always seen subsidy removal as a kind of threat, beyond the economic reform that they termed it to be.
IMF and the Oligarchs
I would like to mention here that the removal of fuel subsidies in Nigeria cannot be understood outside the context of postcolonial dependency because it predates current events. Time and again, economic policy in Nigeria has been carefully moulded by the expectations of the IMF and not by the needs of the people. In other words, it’s the World Bank and foreign investors who own the Nigerian economy. My argument is that what's framed as “domestic reform” is often dictated by loan conditions, debt restructuring talks, and the invisible hand of international finance. For outsiders who may not understand the look of this from within, there’s a bitter irony in watching an oil-rich nation import nearly all of its gasoline. Recently, $18 billion has been spent on so-called renovation of Nigeria’s four refineries yet, sadly, none are working. The irredeemably corrupt politicians in Abuja led by president Tinubu could not account for the dollars or the state of the moribund refineries. As said in the opening of my essay, the country has contradictory characters, even emboldened by Western big hats like the USA which blocked indicting documents on Tinubu’s alleged drug records. It seems to me and to everyone conscious of such happenings that Western countries are complicit in this game of ripping off the poor Nigerians and blaming them for their woes. What’s the cost? Our national sovereignty is traded for something unaccounted for, and the poor are forced to pay the cost no matter what.
In appeasing its foreign financiers, the Nigerian government often adopts austerity measures that deepen the already widened inequality even further. And when the volcano of resistance erupts out of often suppressed corners, as it did in 2012 and 2023, it happens not only because of fuel issues: it’s also about who gets to decide how the nation’s wealth is used, and for whose benefit. In such a scenario, subsidy removal, then, is not a reform. The IMF’s role here is not incidental. As Marxist scholars like David Harvey argue about this, neoliberalism as a class project goes beyond just an economic theory. In essence, it chiefly aims to redistribute wealth upward to reassure elite dominance after the crises of the 1970s threatened their domain of influence. In the case of Nigeria's submission to the IMF, the terms are not about modernizing the society, but have always been about ruling class profiteering. I’ve concluded that this is a reassertion of ruling class power under the guise of state responsibility.
Labour Movements and Resistance
This unfair system helps explain why Nigeria’s working class keeps pushing back: because they often see each new reform as a threat to them maintaining their status quo. From the refineries to the parliament, the story of Nigeria’s labour movement is one of a class that has vehemently refused to be silent amid storms.
Born in the cesarean era of postcolonial industrialism and widely influenced by the ideological battles of the Cold War, the NLC was formally established in 1978, bringing together four national labour centres under one umbrella. From the start of it, it was not just a bargaining body but a political force carrying along locally placed comrades, and ideologically influenced by the popular traditions of Marxist and Pan-Africanist thought. The pioneer leaders of NLC saw the union as part of a voice for wages and welfare and a political instrument for breaking free from elite oppression and foreign economic domination.
The 1980s brought confrontation. The military governments pitched camps with the IMF to implement structural adjustment programs, and it was the NLC that led the public displeasure campaigns against them. Therefore, under the leadership of NLC presidents Paschal Bafyau and later Adams Oshiomhole, the union mobilized against biting fuel hikes, senseless mass layoffs, and austerity that hit the corners of average people. So this hot iron-on-skin became a thorn in the side of successive dictatorships, most notably during the dark years of General Sani Abacha, when the NLC joined pro-democracy coalitions to demand for an unconditional switch to civilian rule. One might ask how the NLC was able to garner massive followership? At the heart of their popular resistance were the oil workers’ unions, particularly PENGASSAN (Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria) and NUPENG (Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers). In fact, these unions were well positioned within the most strategic sectors of the Nigerian economy to usurp disproportionate power. When they strike, oil stops flowing both locally and the impact is felt globally. In 1994, NUPENG's strike against the military junta practically froze economic life. They were met with strong-willed crackdowns, yet they remained undeterred, and at the same time, they were able to plumb their demands with a wider call for democracy and justice (which was nonexistent at that time, and still lingers).
In the Fourth Republic, the union’s role shifted from fighting military dictatorships to negotiating with elected governments, yet its resistance to anti-worker policies like fuel subsidy removals and mass layoffs remained combative and engrained in class struggle. Then, the 2000 and 2003 general strikes over fuel subsidy removal paralyzed commercial cities that sent a clear message that working class people would not silently bear the costs of liberalization nor carry the cross of hardship. But it was in January 2012 that labour’s power truly echoed across the length and breadth of the country. After President Goodluck Jonathan abruptly removed the fuel subsidy, like a flying fish, it triggered a 120% rise in fuel prices. Now, the NLC, alongside civil society groups and Occupy Nigeria movement, shut down the economy for over a week. In just a few hours, protest camps sprung up in states like Lagos, Abuja, Kano, and beyond the frontiers of Nigeria’s political strongholds. For a brief moment, class anger merged with political momentum, and the government was forced to partially reverse its decision.
Again, in May and June 2023, history repeated itself. President Tinubu’s surprise announcement ending fuel subsidies sparked spontaneous protests and a threatened general strike by the NLC and Trade Union Congress (TUC). Though the strike was suspended for negotiation, the tension underscored a familiar truth: labour remains the only organized force capable of disrupting elite consensus and re-centering the needs of the poor, both the low-income working class and nonworking class. Across decades and anti-people regimes, the Nigerian labour movement has preserved a radical tradition which, as I learned from growing up close to an industrial area, is one that's rooted in the lived reality of survival. To confront the venom of the state, NLC does more than demand for fair wages for the common man. What’s more, it contests the very logic of an economy built primarily on extraction and exclusion. In general, their continued relevance only reinforces what Marxists have been saying for over a century about when the working class is organized. It’s still the only force capable of going toe-to-toe with capitalism at its foundation. No amount of NGO tinkering or elite policy reform can substitute for that kind of power. It’s messy, uneven, and full of contradictions, but when workers move together for the same purpose, they shake the ground beneath the system.
Poor Working Class
For Nigeria’s working class and for those who are underpaid and living hand-to-mouth, fuel subsidies were never just about petrol. They were an eggshell lifeline in a country where little else worked. Added to the blight, the road, rail, water, and air transport sectors are in shambles, as much as the epileptic electricity and stagnant wages. In this case, cheap fuel would have offered some little stability in an economy living off borrowing and imports. For me, the removal of subsidies is a subtraction from my daily survival. Realistically, when the 2023 subsidy was axed by president Tinubu, many food vendors in Agege had to double their prices overnight because the cost of moving yams from Benue now cost twice as much. In my state Kaduna, commercial Keke (tricyclists) who once charged ₦100 per trip now ask for ₦200 or more on the same distance. “It’s not greed,” said Jerry Audu, a neighbour and Keke rider in the heart of town. “It’s the fuel. We are barely fending off the job now."
The negative impacts of the subsidy removal did not spare the struggling healthcare system. Which is to say, hospital visits and drug prices are tied to transport and import costs. Therefore, many Nigerians have turned to self-medication or herbal alternatives with varying degrees of risks per se. A 2023 Premium Times report noted that some clinics in Kwara and Nasarawa saw a 40% drop in patient visits within just three months of the subsidy removal. As such, the NLC put it plainly: “You‘re behind Nigeria’s economic woes.”
In essence, fuel subsidies concealed the government’s massive failure, from policy to infrastructure. They gave the illusion that something still worked for the poor, even though it didn’t. Instead, the subsidies worked something like a token or bounced check of inclusion in a system designed to exclude them and keep them silent thereafter. However, to remove them without a social safety net is to rip away that illusion and force the poor to confront the market alone (seeking for help, in this case, is often seen as a crime).
What is the Radical Possibility?
One might say that Nigerian workers’ reactions to economic hardship are resistance against a system that has long been shortchanged against them. In opposing the removal of fuel subsidies, labour unions, street traders, transport workers, and university students are asserting a fundamental demand: that every economic decision stamped in the boardroom should serve the people, not the external creditors or domestic elites who feed fat from the milk bottle. This is a class-based struggle for the autonomy of the common people, desperately waged not in academic halls but on the streets, in markets, and at fuel queues. The question now is whether this resistance can evolve into something more enduring; something a political imagination rooted in solidarity, equity, and self-determination can be birthed from. Can labour move beyond surface-level reaction to become the backbone of a democratic movement that rejects both elite nationalism and the neoliberal dictates of global capital? In the flames of past protests lies the possibility of transformation. They are not just expressing anger or cursing the system, they are struggling and consciously responding to their conditions.