Mr. President: Without Energy Availability and Affordability at the Grassroots—Your Message of Prosperity is Delusional

“The aim of a leader should be the welfare of the people whom he leads. I have used ‘welfare’ to denote the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the people.” Chief Obafemi Awolowo in his 1967 address to Western leaders of thought in Ibadan.

On that immutable premise, my intervention today serves two purposes: a response to President Bola Tinubu’s Independence Day Address and a continuation of my structural amendment to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s production-subsidy proposal.

Mr. President told us that “the emergency treatment is over,” and now begins the “age of prosperity.” I respectfully submit that while Nigeria may have achieved macroeconomic stabilisation, true and inclusive prosperity cannot exist without energy availability and affordability at the grassroots.

I will show this through the ledger of three Nigerian teachers, using illustrative profiles with plausible salary benchmarks.

Fundamentals

Energy availability is reliable access to electricity, petrol, diesel, or compressed natural gas (CNG) to power households, transportation, and productive activities. It is central to energy security, where supply meets demand through infrastructure and distribution networks.

Energy affordability is the capacity to pay for available energy services without sacrificing food, healthcare, housing and other necessities. This requires bringing the structural cost of essential energy within reach of those who need it, not merely raising salaries.

For a poor but resource-endowed Nigeria, the security and equity dimensions of the energy trilemma—expressed practically as availability and affordability—are urgent. Sustainability matters too, but these two are foundational.

The International Energy Agency’s July Electricity Mid-Year Update projects coal to generate 10,974 TWh of 33,313 TWh globally in 2026, or 32.94%—the largest single source even as renewables collectively overtake coal. The global electricity system still depends on a diverse energy mix. Should Nigeria not?

The Grassroots Middle Class Under the Lens

Now, consider the three teachers.

Mrs. Yewande Tinubu, a Level 10 Accounting teacher at Iragbiji Grammar School, Osun State, earns ₦160,000 monthly. Mallam Ibrahim Shettima, a Level 9 English teacher at Jere High School, Borno State, earns ₦150,000. Miss Chinwe Okeke, a Level 8 Chemistry teacher at Aguleri Community High School, Anambra State, earns ₦135,000.

Parents entrust these teachers with educating their children—the future leaders of Nigeria. Their work continues after school: marking scripts, preparing lessons and researching curricula. They pay taxes and represent Nigeria’s productive grassroots middle class.

Mr. President, here is the brutal reality of your abrupt first-day declaration that “fuel subsidy is gone,” before sufficient protections had been put in place for workers like these.

Let us use conservative assumptions. Over 22 school days, a five-kilometre commute each way totals 220 kilometres monthly. In a 2005 Toyota Corolla averaging 7.8 litres/100 km, that requires 17.16 litres of petrol. At home, 82 hours of professional work monthly on an “I better pass my neighbour” generator assumed to consume 0.60 litres/hour requires another 49.2 litres. At ₦1,350 per litre, generation costs ₦66,420 monthly and commuting ₦23,166.

Each teacher spends ₦89,586 monthly on 66.36 litres of petrol to get to school and do preparatory work at home—before food, rent, healthcare, phone and internet data.

Unreliable grid supply makes petrol generators necessary. Teachers servicing car loans may struggle to finance solar-inverter systems. CNG conversion costs ₦350,000–₦600,000—two to five months of salary. No CNG stations are listed for Iragbiji or Aguleri in the official Pi-CNG network. Borno has one on the Maiduguri–Damaturu Road, but access around Jere remains sparse.

In these illustrative profiles, Miss Okeke’s productive-energy costs consume 66.4% of her gross salary. She survives partly on remittances from her big brother, Chinedu, in the UK while awaiting admission to a foreign university—one more young science teacher preparing to join the brain drain. For Mallam Shettima, with two wives and four young children, energy consumes 59.7% of his salary; for Mrs. Tinubu, a single mother of three who lost her husband to kidney disease, 56.0%. Both would need additional income, compromising the devotion they can bring to their classrooms.

Let us make Shettima’s case more conservative. Suppose he rides a fuel-efficient Bajaj Boxer. At 55 km/litre, his monthly commuting bill falls from ₦23,166 to ₦5,400, yet his productive-energy cost remains ₦71,820—47.9% of salary. The motorcycle lowers cost but increases road-crash exposure.

Mr. President, how exactly do you plan to bring prosperity to these teachers?

Energy Policy and Productivity

This is why I support the core framework of Alhaji Atiku Abubaker’s proposal for production subsidy for locally refined petrol.

However, my amendment remains critical: do not begin with the refinery; begin with Nigerians. Identify productive activities society has a structural reason to protect. For these teachers, the goal should be to halve their productive-energy burden—from ₦89,586 to about ₦44,793 monthly. That reduces it to 33.2% of Miss Okeke’s gross salary, 29.9% of Mallam Shettima’s and 28.0% of Mrs. Tinubu’s—still substantial, but far below 56% to 66%.

That reduction should come first from improved energy-system efficiency; lower production costs across the value chain; functioning public refineries; and tax-deductible productive-energy costs—then, where necessary, targeted production support for verified users.

Together, these three teachers require about 199 litres monthly. Applied to roughly 937,000 public primary and secondary teachers, based on 2022 UBEC data, that is about 2.07 million litres of PMS daily.

Using Dangote’s reported 39.9% PMS share of refinery output for the 12 months ended June 2026—rather than the earlier 55% product-mix assumption reported by the IMF—implies a simplified crude-equivalent throughput of about 32,700 barrels/day.

The pilot could simultaneously include an assumed 271,800 eligible non-VIP police personnel, whose energy needs underpin community security, especially around vulnerable schools. They incur uncovered mobility costs and need electricity for communication and reporting; eligibility can be linked to personnel and payroll records.

Assume a 30-litre monthly PMS cap per eligible officer—roughly half the teacher benchmark because some police mobility is institutionally supported. That adds about 4,300 crude-equivalent barrels per day, taking the combined requirement to about 37,000 crude-equivalent barrels per day.

Under the pilot, if production support is delivered through a crude-price discount, it should apply only to the crude-equivalent share attributable to verified eligible PMS volumes. Such a mechanism may require an appropriate amendment to the relevant provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act.

Supported PMS volumes should then be tracked through custody-transfer metering and digital reconciliation from refinery gate to participating filling stations across the 774 LGAs, with eligible litres redeemed by verified beneficiaries at the programme price.

The same architecture could extend to verified diesel needs for large farms and factories. Fiscal exposure would be limited by capping both eligible volumes and support per litre.

As grid-electricity reliability improves, generator dependence falls; as CNG infrastructure expands, government’s exposure should decline further.

Admonition

Mr. President, you warned against ‘certain influential but regressive voices’ seeking a return to the ‘abuse of addictive subsidies.’ That framing creates a false binary. Nigeria need not choose between yesterday’s corrupt universal subsidy and today’s exposure of low-income productive citizens to international energy prices.

Band A customers pay about ₦209.50 per kWh before VAT for a minimum 20-hour daily service commitment—roughly the July 2026 Texas residential average at current exchange rates—yet Texas has no service-band rationing structure. Petrol at ₦1,400–₦1,500 per litre likewise rivals or exceeds prices in parts of the United States. This is utterly preposterous. Nigeria’s lower labour costs should offset part of the domestic energy-cost structure.

The policy question is: how much of today’s price reflects legitimate costs versus power-system inefficiency, underutilization of mature oilfields, poor infrastructure, financing dysfunction, system losses, weak competition and institutional failure. Why should those failures be transferred to workers paid in naira? That is an assignment for your energy and economic teams.

Advanced economies combine market pricing with targeted relief for specified productive uses. The U.S. provides fuel-tax credits or refunds for qualifying farm and off-highway business uses; the UK permits rebated fuel for qualifying agricultural uses. The principle is targeted support for identifiable productive activity—not universal subsidy.

The statecraft question is: who should be supported, for what productive purpose, in what quantity, at what cost, for how long and with what verification and monitoring?

Until your administration shifts from macroeconomic rhetoric to grassroots energy availability and affordability, any proclamation of national prosperity will remain a dangerous delusion.