By Dada Olusegun
Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi is a well-known character in Nigeria’s political space thanks to his 24 years presence in the corridors of power both at the state and national level. Some would say he was a formidable force at some point in Nigeria’s modern democratic journey and at 60, may yet play one or two more roles in the country’s democratic future.
Chibuike Amaechi began his mainstream political career as a Member of the Rivers State House of Assembly representing Ikwerre Constituency in 1999 and became Speaker of the House for eight years before serving as Rivers State Governor for the next eight years. During the 2015 presidential election, Amaechi was the DG of Buhari/Osinbajo Presidential Campaign Council and after APC secured a historic victory, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi served as Nigeria’s Minister of Transportation for two terms of Buhari’s presidency.
Rotimi Amaechi contested for the APC presidential ticket as he sought to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari, unfortunately he came a distant second behind President Bola Tinubu. More than two years after his primary election loss, it appears Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi has not gotten over the legitimate pain of defeat.
Recently, as opposition politicians intensify their selfish plots to take power, Amaechi has resurfaced on the political scene, making many outlandish comments, claims and falsehoods against the current administration, some national institutions such as INEC and even his supposed political party, the APC. I will attempt to puncture some of the lies the former governor of Rivers State has been publicly dishing out recently.
“Subsidy savings in private pockets” – Amaechi
During his 60th birthday celebration in Abuja, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi confessed that if he was President today, he would have pursued some of the policies currently being implemented by President Bola Tinubu such as removing fuel subsidy and FX subsidy. Amaechi however alleged that these policies are not reaching the public but instead enriching private individuals. Amaechi pointedly said that “savings” of fuel subsidy is going into private pockets.
This is a very egregious take by Amaechi, who for almost eight years was privy to proceedings of the Federal Executive Council as Minister and therefore saw the deep fiscal hole fuel subsidy was creating in the treasury to the point that NNPCL was not remiting any revenue into the federation account. Worse still, the FG had to sell Nigeria’s crude oil in advance to keep funding fuel subsidy and to meet basic government expenditures such as payment of salaries.
The federal government also increasingly resorted to ways and means and repeatedly exceeded allowable limits. At the end of 2022, the CBN had advanced more than N22 trillion (approx. $48 billion) in ways and means to the federal government, negatively impacting on Nigeria’s macroeconomic fundamentals including inflation. In fact, at towards the end of the last administration, due to subsidy yoke, huge debts and declining revenue inflows, the federal government expended around 97% of its revenue on debt service.
In case Mr. Amaechi has forgotten, let me refresh his memory. Between 2006 and 2015, it cost Nigeria a cumulative of N8.94 trillion to subsidise petrol. In 2022 alone, FG’s subsidy bill was N4.39 trillion – almost half of what Nigeria spent to subsidise petrol in 9 years! As a result of FG’s precarious revenue situation by 2022, despite budgeting more than N4 trillion for subsidy in 2022, FG could not make money available to fund it. NNPCL had to accommodate the costs in its balance sheet. In 2023, FG budgeted N3.36 trillion for petrol subsidy for six months (January to June) yet did not provide one kobo to fund it. As at May, 2023 apart from owing NNPCL N2.7 trillion as subsidy costs it bore, FG through NNPCL had already spent billions of dollars it borrowed by selling volumes of Nigeria’s crude oil ahead of time to creditors. It was becoming an unsustainable mess.
Therefore, the removal of fuel subsidy was first and foremost to stop further borrowing to finance this unsustainable expenditure. What the subsidy removal did was to remove the burden of looking for funds to subsidise petrol from the shoulders of the federal government. After the initial subsidy removal announcement by the President on May 29, 2023 fuel subsidy actually stopped. However by August 2023, an implicit subsidy returned due to the floating of the Naira that greatly increased landing cost of PMS from the previously unsubsidized rate of just over N600/litre to more than N1000/litre. NNPCL took in the extra cost in its balance sheet as FX differential losses.
Between August 2023 and August 2024, NNPCL incurred huge losses trying to moderate prices until FG decided to start selling PMS at whatever the market prices were. Hence total and final removal of fuel subsidy happened only in September 2024, which saw PMS price rise steeply to as high as N1200/litre.
So, are the gains of subsidy removal benefiting only private pockets?
The clear answer to the above question is NO! First, let correct the recurring misleading impression that as a result of subsidy removal, Nigeria was now saving trillions in actual cash revenue that it previously expended on fuel subsidy. That is not the case. The real savings in this context is not having to BORROW or mortgage future crude oil production just to subsidise fuel consumption of Nigerians and that of our entire West African and Central African neighbours. It also means that gradually revenue inflows from crude oil sales into the federation account will begin to increase. NNPCL started remiting 50% of oil revenues to the federation account in January 2025 while retaining the other half to settle and reconcile outstanding subsidy liabilities. Mind you, the country is still paying for past subsidy debts owed to NNPCL and other international creditors.
As a result of the increased availability of revenue, FAAC now shares an increased amount of revenue to the three tiers of government. These tiers are not private pockets. Many states have seen their monthly FAAC inflows double or triple within the past two years of President Tinubu’s administration. Thanks to these increased allocations, the states are now more liquid and are repaying their commercial loans at an unprecedented rate. In the past 18 months of Tinubu’s administration, 33 states of the federation repaid N1.85 trillion out of their total domestic debt of N5.82 trillion – more than 30% repayment!
These states are now able to finance more projects and programs in their states without recourse to commercial loans. This is a gain of subsidy removal and it benefits the majority of citizens and not few private pockets as Amaechi mischievously declared.
FX Subsidy gains
Another major policy win of the Tinubu administration whose gains Rotimi Amaechi alleged benefited private pockets is the floating of the Naira. But Amaechi’s position on this is very laughable and not backed by any fact. First, as at May 2023, Nigeria was already in a FX crisis. Our net foreign exchange reserves was just around $4 billion, yet we had over $7 billion in overdue FX obligations that our Central Bank could not honour to commercial banks including foreign airlines. Nigeria as at June 2023 held the unenviable record as the country with highest amount of blocked airline funds in the world amounting to $850 million! This unenviable record scared would-be investors as they are not sure of easily repatriating their funds anytime they decide to exit Nigeria or take out profits.
President Bola Tinubu met a multiple exchange rate regime with a very wide margin between the grossly undervalued official rate pegged at a fixed amount and the going rate at the parallel market. This was fueling a lucrative arbitrage, which favoured mostly the connected elites and their cronies – something Mr. Amaechi cannot deny knowledge of. As a result of the multiple exchange rate and the pegging of the Naira, Nigeria’s government between just 2021 and 2023 lost N13.2 trillion to the FX subsidy. These losses when broken down shows that Nigeria lost N2 trillion in 2021, N6.2 trillion in 2022, and N5 trillion in 2023. These monies went exclusively to private pockets!
Today, as a result of President Tinubu’s bold move to float the Naira, confidence has been restored to Nigeria’s FX market. We now get full Naira value of foreign currency revenue earnings, which has greatly impacted the revenue profile of both the federal government and the subnational governments. Our net foreign reserves has grown from $3.99 billion in 2023 to $23.11 billion in 2024! We are now able to service our external debt obligations timely and in the past two years have expended over $10 billion to either service debts or clear FX obligations.
Today the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has confirmed that Nigeria has cleared every outstanding blocked funds and is no longer on the list of indebted nations. Nigeria has cleared its indebtedness to IMF with President Bola Tinubu administration paying $3.264 billion to IMF between June 2023 to early 2025. This was possible due to increased FX liquidity brought about by a more transparent FX regime which attracted greater inflows into the market.
Most importantly, the era of arbitrage has ended in the FX market. The gap between the official rate and the parallel market rate is very negligible. What this means is that, Nigeria is no longer enriching private pockets who took advantage of the huge gap between the pegged official rate and the black market rate to make billions on a regular basis. So, it is important to let Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi understand that President Bola Tinubu’s FX policy literally took trillions of naira out of the private pockets of the rich and connected into the economy and not the other way round as he alleged.
Amaechi’s Attack on the Integrity of INEC and its Chairman
In a follow-up TV interview after his birthday outbursts, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi likened today’s INEC leadership led by Prof. Mahmood Yakubu to the era of Prof. Maurice Iwu and stated that if Prof. Yakubu was INEC chairman in 2015, APC wouldn’t have won the 2015 presidential election. To put it mildly, this is a most uncharitable and deceitful statement from Amaechi.
Rotimi Amaechi displayed premium hypocrisy here. First, Amaechi’s then political party, the PDP enjoyed electoral patronage from Prof. Maurice Iwu between 2005 and 2010 including his election as Governor in the 2007 governorship election in Rivers State. Rotimi Amaechi did not complain despite the horrendous conduct of INEC under Iwu. Even when Prof. Jega came into office and conducted the 2011 election, Rivers State returned highly questionable voting figures both in the presidential election and Amaechi’s second term re-election.
Prof. Jega improved our electoral system by the introduction of the card reader, which greatly helped to make the 2015 election reasonably credible despite some noted imperfections. President Buhari appointed Prof. Mahmood Yakubu as INEC Chairman in 2015 and he delivered the 2019 general elections. APC retained power. Amaechi did not complain about the INEC leadership then. In 2023, Prof. Yakubu-led INEC introduced the BVAS, which is an innovative technology that greatly reduced incidents of overvoting and greatly enhanced the credibility of the electoral process.
It is therefore strange for Amaechi to equate an INEC leadership that improved upon the card reader technology by introducing a better BVAS technology to checkmate rigging to a Prof. Maurice Iwu that literally announced pre-determined results written before actual voting took place. It is very clear that the 2023 presidential election was keenly contested and the results reflected the voting dynamics across the country. Only a mischievous character would suggest otherwise.
Amaechi and 2027
Rotimi Amaechi is obviously interested in the 2027 presidential election and has made it open that he is willing to work with other opposition politicians to sack President Bola Tinubu from office. That is his inalienable democratic right. However, as Amaechi launches his 2027 presidential bid, it is necessary for him to stay within the confines of fact and not distort history or make outlandish claims that are bizarre. It is not a crime to aspire to displace President Bola Tinubu from office, however Rotimi Amaechi needs to eschew hypocrisy while attempting to do so. Amaechi should focus on telling Nigerians why they should look towards his direction in 2027.
It is already a huge task for Amaechi and it appears he does not know what else to use to take President Bola Tinubu’s two year-old administration hence his resort to blackmail, falsehoods and sewing tissues of lies. If he confessed that he would have done many of the policies currently being implemented by President Bola Tinubu, why the opposition then? It is unreasonable to expect Nigeria to become a haven of prosperity under two years of managing a severe economic crisis that could have turned Nigeria into another Venezuela.
President Bola Tinubu has steadied the Nigerian ship after passing through a severe storm and headwinds. The economic recovery is accelerating. The outlook is very promising with many investors expressing strong confidence in the economy with actual investments. The best the political elites, especially those who just came out of power, should do is to help galvanise Nigerians to support the focused reforms of the Tinubu administration across all sectors of the economy. This is just the first two years, by the time a Tinubu administration completes 8 years of sustained reforms and transformation, the world will surely take note of the arrival of Nigeria on the biggest global economic stage.