Tinubu’s Exodus and a Nation That Can No Longer Afford the Journey
When President Bola Tinubu told the City Boy Movement in Abuja, “You cannot ask Moses to go back to Egypt,” he was defending his decision to remove the petrol subsidy and insisting that Nigeria must never return to the old arrangement. Drawing on the biblical story of Moses leading the Israelites out of bondage, he presented the removal as a necessary step towards a better future. But there is a question the President’s metaphor leaves unanswered: what happens when the people being led out of Egypt begin to wonder whether life was better before they left?
Perhaps the President should listen to what Nigerians are actually saying. They are not necessarily asking to return to every weakness of the past. They are asking why escaping that past has made the present so difficult to endure.
There was a time when a Nigerian could fill a tank of petrol without first calculating which household expense would have to wait. A trader could move goods to the market without watching transport costs consume the profit. A parent could send a child to school and still have a reasonable chance of feeding the family that evening. Life was not easy, and the old subsidy system had serious problems, but ordinary people had a little more room to breathe.
Today, that room has narrowed for millions.
When Tinubu announced the removal of the petrol subsidy on May 29, 2023, the effect on pump prices was immediate. Transport fares rose, businesses faced higher operating costs, and the price of moving food from farms to markets increased. The depreciation of the naira, supply difficulties, high borrowing costs and other economic pressures have compounded the hardship. No honest account of Nigeria’s economic troubles can blame everything on one decision. But neither can the government escape responsibility for the contribution that decision made to the burden Nigerians now carry.
Think of the small shop owner who must run a generator because public electricity cannot be relied upon. Petrol is not an indulgence for that person; it is part of the cost of keeping the business open. When fuel becomes more expensive, the owner must raise prices, accept smaller profits or close shop. The customer, already struggling to afford basic necessities, buys less. A business that once supported a family may eventually become impossible to sustain.
Multiply that experience across markets, workshops, transport businesses and homes throughout the country, and the consequences become impossible to dismiss as a temporary inconvenience.
This is what troubles me about the government’s insistence that there can be no going back. The argument begins with a valid point: Nigeria could not continue indefinitely with a subsidy system that placed enormous demands on public finances and was vulnerable to abuse. But the fact that the old arrangement was unsustainable does not mean every consequence of its removal must be accepted without question.
A government can make a necessary decision and still mishandle its consequences. It can identify a genuine problem and fail to provide adequate protection for the people affected by its solution. There is no contradiction in acknowledging the need for reform while demanding that the reform be made to work for ordinary Nigerians.
The real test is what the country has gained.
The International Monetary Fund’s 2026 assessment of Nigeria’s economy offers an important part of the answer. It acknowledges that reforms introduced since 2023 have strengthened aspects of macroeconomic stability and improved the country’s external position. It also warns that conditions remain difficult for many Nigerians. The report estimates that poverty reached 63 per cent under Nigeria’s national poverty line and that 27 million people faced food insecurity in the autumn of 2025. It further notes that the estimated savings from fuel subsidy removal did not appear to have accrued to the budget in 2025 as expected.
That last finding deserves particular attention. If subsidy removal was necessary to rescue public finances, the government must be able to explain what happened to the money it expected to save. How much was actually captured? How much went towards debt servicing and other expenditure? What was invested in public services? What measurable improvement has followed for the people who have borne the cost?
These are not questions for the opposition alone. They are questions of public accountability.
In July 2026, Nigeria’s Finance Minister acknowledged that much of the financial gain from subsidy removal and foreign-exchange reforms had been absorbed by higher debt-servicing costs and increased government spending. That explanation makes transparency even more important. Nigerians need to know not merely that savings were expected, but how the money was ultimately used.
The government cannot keep pointing to the amount it has stopped spending without explaining what the country has received in return.
Other countries have faced sharp increases in energy prices and intervened to protect households and businesses. Some have used targeted cash assistance, others have supported public transport or provided temporary relief from energy costs. These policies are not identical to Nigeria’s former petrol subsidy, and their suitability depends on the circumstances of each country. But they demonstrate that governments have choices. Protecting citizens from severe economic shocks does not necessarily mean returning to an old system unchanged.
Nigeria has particular reasons to find a workable alternative. Public electricity remains unreliable in many communities. Affordable mass transit is unavailable to large numbers of people. Businesses depend on generators, and the cost of fuel affects almost every stage of getting goods from producers to consumers.
In Nigeria, where electricity is scarce and generators power everything from corner shops to major hospitals, petrol was never a luxury commodity. It was our social security.
That line matters because it captures something the argument about subsidy removal often overlooks. For millions of Nigerians, the price of petrol influences the price of nearly everything else. The old arrangement was an imperfect form of protection, and its benefits were unevenly distributed. But taking it away without putting adequate alternatives in place left households and businesses exposed to costs they had little power to control.
If the government believes targeted assistance is better than a universal subsidy, it must make that assistance effective. If public transport is the answer, people need transport they can afford and rely upon. If improved electricity is expected to reduce dependence on generators, that improvement must reach the communities and businesses that need it. Announcing programmes is not the same as delivering relief.
Nor can a student-loan scheme, however useful to eligible students, be presented as an answer to the wider economic pressures facing families. A parent struggling with food, rent, transport and school expenses needs a broader response than a single intervention can provide.
The President’s remarks also came at a politically revealing moment. The City Boy Movement was mobilising support for his re-election in 2027. Tinubu urged supporters to take his administration’s achievements to campuses, markets and villages, obtain their permanent voter cards and use them. The movement’s director-general pledged 10 million votes for the President’s re-election.
There is nothing unusual about a governing party preparing for an election. But an election campaign is also a time for citizens to assess the government seeking another mandate. Nigerians will not all judge Tinubu by the strength of his political organisation or the number of young people attending its rallies. Many will judge him by what has happened to their earnings, their businesses and their ability to meet the cost of living.
When the President promises to campaign with ideas and original thinking, he should expect people to ask what those ideas have delivered. Better economic indicators matter, but they cannot be the whole story. A country may achieve greater macroeconomic stability while many of its citizens remain unable to afford a decent life. The government itself must recognise the difference between an economy that is performing better on paper and one in which people can feel the improvement.
Tinubu’s Moses analogy makes this distinction especially important. The Israelites did not leave Egypt simply to prove that they could survive the wilderness. They left because they wanted a better life. The hardship of the journey had meaning because there was a destination worth reaching.
Nigerians are entitled to ask whether their own journey is bringing them closer to that destination.
If the old subsidy system was wasteful, reform it. If public money was being lost through corruption or poor administration, stop the leakages. If the country needs more revenue, collect it fairly and use it responsibly. But do not ask people to accept an endless period of hardship as proof that the policy must be right. The purpose of reform is to improve the country, not to test how much suffering its citizens can withstand.
There is no disgrace in correcting a policy when experience reveals its shortcomings. A government that changes course in response to evidence is not necessarily weak; it may be demonstrating the very judgement that leadership requires. What would be irresponsible is to allow political pride to prevent necessary adjustments while households and businesses continue to struggle.
I do not believe Nigeria needs to return blindly to the subsidy regime that existed before May 2023. What it needs is a government willing to recover the principle that economic policy must serve the people, not demand their sacrifice indefinitely. That means making public spending transparent, ensuring that assistance reaches those who need it, improving electricity and transport, and demonstrating that the gains from reform are reaching beyond government accounts and financial markets.
The President should not mistake the demand for relief as a refusal to understand economics. Nigerians understand the price of petrol because they pay it. They understand inflation because they meet it every time they go to the market. They understand the cost of reform because they have had to make choices their incomes can no longer comfortably support.
They are not asking for a miracle. They are asking for a life they can afford.
Mr President, you have invoked Moses and the Exodus to defend your decision to remove the petrol subsidy. But the biblical story you have chosen is not simply about leaving Egypt. It is about deliverance from bondage and the arduous journey towards a promised land. The Israelites did not cross the Red Sea to discover that freedom meant an endless existence in the wilderness. When the journey became difficult, they remembered the food they had eaten in Egypt and questioned whether leaving had been worth the cost. Their longing for what they had left behind was born of the suffering they endured on the way to what they had been promised.
That is the uncomfortable question your analogy raises for Nigeria. What happens when the people you have led out of one economic arrangement begin to feel that the hardship of the journey has become unbearable, while the promised destination remains beyond their reach? You cannot answer them merely by declaring that Moses cannot return to Egypt. You must show them that the journey has a purpose and that the promised land is more than a political metaphor.
Nigerians should not have to choose between the captivity they knew before subsidy removal and the suffering they endure in its aftermath. If the old Egypt was unsustainable, the wilderness cannot become their permanent home. The Israelites questioned the journey when the hardship became unbearable and the promised destination seemed distant. Nigerians, too, have a right to ask what their sacrifices are leading to.
Mr President, you have told us that we cannot go back to Egypt. Then show us that the Promised Land is real.
Stephanie Shaakaa shaakaastephanie@yahoo.com
08034861434
