Olayiwola, who managed to be a tenant of a three-bedroom flat with his bike-man hustle, later became someone owing house rent payment for a single room after the removal of subsidy.
As it is known subsidy is an amount of money granted by a Government or public organization to help an industry to keep their commodity or service price low. It is a benefit that individuals, businesses or institutions take from the Government.
Subsidy removal in Nigeria has both negative and positive impacts on citizens and the economy. For this reason, Nigerians will be comforted if the subsidy can be reformed.
The positive implications of the subsidy removal are that it provides financial resources for other sectors of the economy; it reduces Nigeria’s reliance on imported fuel; provides funds for the development of public infrastructure; also increases employment.
These are the positive impacts that the removal of subsidy is supposed to implicate to Nigerians but to the surprise, Nigeria’s 2023 fuel subsidy removal is unbelievable as it does not benefit the economy.
On the other hand, the negative implications of it are: fuel subsidy removal decreases economic growth in the short term; it increases inflation; increases poverty; increases fuel smuggling; increases crime; increases the prices of petroleum products and loss of jobs in the informal sector.
Nigeria has fallen economically since the removal of fuel subsidies, all the business owners are complaining of an increase in price of goods day by day, getting a product with a particular price today the next day the price will increase. A lot of higher class families have become average while average have become low class, poverty has spread over the counter because of the subsidy removal, youth started to commit a crime; robbery, kidnapping, fraudulent, cybercrime and other bad characters when there is no secured job for them in the country.
Some people even start smuggling fuel, while products like petroleum jelly and other petroleum products are increased in price. Most of the workers have become workless, jobless, and lost their jobs when the company can not afford to pay them salaries anymore.
It is recommended that the government reform the subsidy or carefully evaluate the impact of fuel subsidy removal on individuals and businesses and provide palliatives and other economic relief programs to cushion the adverse effect on individuals and firms.
