Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, a member of the governing board of the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD), has expressed concerns that the planned palliative measures by the federal government may not achieve their intended purpose, similar to what happened with the COVID-19 palliatives.

Following the removal of fuel subsidy, President Bola Tinubu established a committee to strategize on palliative measures aimed at mitigating the impact of the policy, which resulted in a three-fold increase in fuel prices.

During an ARISE TV program, Prof. Ibrahim remarked, “The palliative can easily become another fuel subsidy, and we saw that very clearly during COVID-19, where the Ministry of Disaster Management claimed they were paying billions of naira every month for school feeding. However, schools were closed, children were at home, and when this question was raised, the response was that they had traced the people and students. The question then became ‘how?'”

He further mentioned that efforts have been made over the past decade to identify and map the poor in the country for the fuel subsidy program. There is a history of conditional grants provided to families. However, Prof. Ibrahim expressed concern that the audit of the palliatives disbursed during COVID-19 would reveal one of the greatest scams in the country’s history.

In April, the federal government, under former President Muhammadu Buhari, announced that it had secured $800 million from the World Bank for post-subsidy palliative plans. The government pledged to provide N5,000 to 10 million poor households for six months as a palliative measure following the removal of petrol subsidy after June.

The skepticism expressed by Prof. Ibrahim reflects concerns about the effectiveness and transparency of subsidy palliatives in Nigeria, considering previous instances where similar initiatives were marred by mismanagement and corruption.