Continued from yesterday & concluded
….Government must expand subsidised health insurance to cover low-income earners, informal workers, senior citizens, pregnant women, children and people living with chronic illnesses. Basic diagnostic tests, maternal care, emergency services and essential medicines should be available at little or no cost to the most vulnerable.
Primary healthcare centres should receive direct and transparent funding, with public dashboards showing what each facility receives and the services it is required to provide. Citizens should be able to confirm whether medicines said to have been supplied were actually received and dispensed.
Local production of essential medicines and medical consumables should also be encouraged through tax relief and affordable financing. But companies receiving such incentives must demonstrate that the support has increased local production and reduced the cost of medicine.
A nation that subsidises the treatment and prevention of illness is not wasting money. It is preserving its human capital.
Subsidise Homes People Can Afford
Housing costs consume a disproportionate share of household income. In many cities, tenants are required to pay one or two years’ rent in advance, even though most workers earn their salaries monthly.
Government should support affordable housing through low-interest mortgages, rent-to-own schemes, serviced land and reduced costs for locally produced building materials. Housing cooperatives organised by workers, artisans, traders and professional groups should have access to long-term development finance.
Rather than constructing a few highly publicised estates that ordinary people cannot afford, the government should enable citizens to build incrementally. It can provide properly planned land, roads, drainage, electricity and water while beneficiaries finance construction in stages.
Housing subsidy should not become another avenue for allocating luxury homes to public officials and their associates. It must be designed for teachers, nurses, artisans, junior civil servants, traders and young families.
The cost of each publicly supported housing unit, the identity of the contractor, the allocation criteria and the identities of beneficiaries should be open to scrutiny. If a house is described as affordable, the public should be told: affordable to whom?
Subsidise Education That Produces Competence
Nigeria already claims to subsidise education, but too much of our educational expenditure produces certificates without competence.
Subsidy should increasingly follow the student and the skills the economy requires. Government should support vocational and technical education in construction, electrical installation, plumbing, welding, renewable-energy maintenance, agriculture, digital technology, healthcare support and manufacturing.
Students from poor families should receive scholarships and loans, but institutions must also be held accountable for the competence and employability of their graduates. Technical colleges should be rehabilitated and equipped. Companies that train and employ apprentices should receive tax incentives.
Those incentives must be tied to verifiable outcomes. A company claiming a tax concession for training one thousand young people must provide evidence that the training took place, that recognised skills were acquired and that a reasonable number of participants progressed into employment or enterprise.
We must subsidise learning that enables people to solve problems, create value and earn a living—not merely the prolonged pursuit of certificates.
Subsidise Public Transportation
One of the quickest ways to reduce the impact of petrol prices is to provide affordable mass transportation.
Federal and state governments should invest in efficient bus systems, rail networks and waterways where appropriate. Transport cooperatives should be assisted to acquire gas-powered and electric buses under transparent repayment programmes.
A well-run public transportation system benefits everyone, particularly workers, students, traders and low-income families. It reduces household expenditure, congestion, fuel consumption and the pressure for a universal petrol subsidy.
Rather than making every litre of petrol artificially cheap—including petrol consumed by owners of several luxury vehicles—government can make the daily journey of the ordinary worker affordable.
Here again, the cost of the buses, the terms of acquisition, the selection of operators and the fares charged must be public. Subsidised buses should not mysteriously disappear into private fleets or become campaign vehicles belonging to politicians.
Support Work, Not Idleness
There is also a place for temporary cash transfers, especially during periods of severe economic adjustment. But cash support must be targeted, verifiable and linked to a credible social register. It should protect the elderly, people with disabilities, unemployed youths undergoing training and families living in extreme poverty.
Beyond this, the government could introduce wage support for small businesses that employ and train young Nigerians. Tax credits could be offered to enterprises that create verifiable new jobs. Micro, small and medium-sized businesses should have access to affordable credit, particularly in productive sectors.
The best social protection is not permanent dependence. It is the opportunity to work, produce and live with dignity.
Transparency Is Not Optional
The success of any new subsidy philosophy will depend on transparency.
Nigeria’s problem has never been the complete absence of good policies. Our greater problem has been the capture of those policies by privileged interests. Programmes announced in the name of the poor often become opportunities for contractors, officials, politicians and their associates to enrich themselves.
Every subsidy programme must therefore answer certain basic questions:
Who is receiving the subsidy? How much is being spent? What are the selection criteria? What result is expected? How will that result be measured? What benefit reaches the ordinary citizen? Who audits the programme, and what happens when it is abused?
The total cost of every subsidy should appear openly in federal and state budgets. Beneficiary lists should be auditable. Allocations and payments should be digitally traceable. Independent audit reports should be published regularly, not hidden in government offices.
The National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly must conduct serious oversight. Civil society organisations, professional bodies, organised labour, consumer associations and the media must have access to the information required to follow the money.
Subsidies should also have review and expiration dates. A programme that is not reducing costs, increasing production, expanding access or improving lives should be redesigned or discontinued.
Any beneficiary—whether an oil refinery, solar company, fertiliser supplier, transport operator, housing developer, school or hospital—that diverts a subsidy or fails to pass on the intended benefit should lose the concession, refund the money and face prosecution where fraud is established.
Transparency cannot be an afterthought added to a subsidy programme after money has been spent. It must be built into the programme from the beginning.
The guiding principle must be simple: public money must produce a measurable public benefit.
The Choice Before Nigeria
Nigeria cannot afford to return blindly to the old petrol subsidy regime. But neither can the government simply tell suffering citizens to endure indefinitely while the promised benefits of reform remain remote.
Economic reform cannot survive on statistics alone. It must eventually become food on the table, medicine in the clinic, electricity in the home, affordable transportation to work and hope in the lives of citizens.
The poor do not experience the economy through graphs, foreign reserves or credit ratings. They experience it through the price of rice, the cost of transportation, the availability of medicine, school fees, house rent and whether their small businesses can remain open.
The answer to the present crisis is not to subsidise petrol indiscriminately once again. It is to support domestic refining transparently and subsidise the things that make expensive petrol less central to our survival.
Give local refineries Nigerian crude under a transparent and properly monitored concession, and insist that the savings reach consumers. Give homes affordable solar power, and families will buy less fuel. Give cities efficient public transportation, and fewer people will depend on private cars. Give farmers affordable inputs and storage, and food prices will fall. Give citizens health insurance, and illness will not destroy entire families. Give young people relevant education and productive skills, and they will build livelihoods rather than wait endlessly for government jobs.
The debate, therefore, should no longer be framed as subsidy versus no subsidy.
The real choice is between a subsidy that fuels consumption and corruption and one that expands production, opportunity and human welfare.
Nigeria does not need the return of the old subsidy. It needs a better subsidy philosophy—one that transfers public resources from waste to productivity, from privilege to need, and from temporary relief to lasting independence.
Subsidise the farmer, not the smuggler. Subsidise the patient, not fraudulent claims. Subsidise the student, the commuter, the homeowner and the small producer. Support local refining, but ensure that every concession is disclosed and every benefit reaches the consumer. Above all, subsidise the ability of Nigerians to live, work and prosper—and let the people see clearly where every naira goes.
