The Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) said the country would have spent between N38 trillion and N52 trillion to subsidise fuel this year if President Bola Tinubu had not removed fuel subsidies in 2023.

Speaking at the inauguration of the NRS Headquarters in Abuja yesterday, the NRS Chairman, Zacch Adedeji, said inflation could have risen as high as 120 per cent without the administration’s economic reforms. He said: “People complain that the pump price is high, but as a data-driven student of economics, I brought the facts.

“The price of petrol in Nigeria is approximately $0.88 per litre. “In the United States, it is $1.70 (22 per cent higher); in India, it is 25 per cent higher; and in South Africa, it is 35 per cent higher.

“Globally, our prices are 50 per cent lower because you allowed local refineries to work.” On his inauguration, Tinubu ended fuel subsidies, a move that pushed the pump price from below N200 to almost N1,000 per litre. Since the Middle East war, however, prices have soared to above N1,200 per litre, depending on the location. Adedeji praised Tinubu for stabilising prices and restoring macroeconomic balance.

He also saluted the President for not retaining the fuel subsidy regime, saying it would have severely distorted public finances, noting that at a $120 per barrel oil price, subsidy payments could have consumed as much as 76 per cent of the N68 trillion budget. The agency chief said: “If you’ve not taken that decision, Mr President, the inflation would have been 75 to 120 per cent. Today, inflation is around 15 per cent and declining.”

Adedeji added: “Just imagine that N52 trillion out of N68 trillion would have gone to fuel subsidies. That would have been 76 per cent of total spending,” he said, stressing that the decision to scrap the subsidy was a fiscal necessity rather than a policy option. He lauded the government’s Naira-for-Crude policy, saying it moved Nigeria from a net importer to a net exporter of petroleum products.

The chairman said: “I have studied political philosophy and economic history, and I know of no other instance where a nation sold its primary resource in its own local currency rather than a foreign reserve currency. “I remember vividly that Sunday when you (Tinubu) called me and said, ‘Zacch, get your pen; I want to sell crude in naira’.

“I replied: ‘Mr President, crude is always benchmarked in dollars.’ You insisted: ‘Go and do this.’ You made the impossible possible. Because of that vision, we have no queues today. “We have moved from being a net importer to a net exporter, with reports showing Aliko (Dangote) supplying 17 cargoes to other African countries.”