Mohammed Idris has warned that restoring Nigeria’s petrol subsidy would reverse economic gains attributed to the reform, responding to renewed calls for the policy to be brought back. His argument was published on 24 August 2026 by Vanguard, while a Daily Trust version was distributed by AllAfrica on the same date.
Idris said proposals to restore the subsidy “under any guise” require an assessment of what Nigeria has gained since the reform and what it could lose by changing course. He presented the issue as a choice between maintaining the current direction and surrendering benefits that he said had followed the subsidy’s removal.
In setting out his position, Idris referred to conditions in 2022, when Nigeria was dealing with declining oil production. The supplied reports describe the scale of the previous subsidy problem as important to the debate, but do not provide complete figures for its cost or quantify the economic gains Idris says have since been achieved.
The reports also do not identify the people or organisations behind the renewed calls, the form a restored subsidy might take, or any timetable for reconsidering the policy. No response from subsidy advocates is included. Those details remain necessary to compare Idris’s warning with specific proposals for reducing petrol costs or changing the existing system.