Good question. And without beating around the bush, I will show you five key areas where the money saved is going.
In April 2023, just a month before the handover of power from General Buhari to JP Morgan, in a report titled ‘Nigeria: Reform Pause Rather Than Fatigue’, exposed that the Buhari administration actually left Nigeria with a net foreign reserve of $3.7 billion, rather than the $14 billion they claimed in public. From that meagre amount, the Tinubu government has raised our foreign reserves to $50.26 billion, as of Monday, June 8, 2026, our highest level in seventeen years.
You may ask why Nigeria needs such high reserves. It is to protect our economy against future economic shocks arising from a crash in exports, to help pay for vital goods and services we need from overseas, and, finally, to guarantee our loans.
Each state in the federation is now receiving at least double (some more than double) what they were getting under General Buhari when Nigeria still operated the subsidy regime. For example, the Federation Account Allocation Committee distributed a total of ₦725.571 billion as revenue to the three tiers of government in March 2022. However, for the same period in 2026, namely March 2026, the FAAC disbursed ₦2.036 trillion to the three tiers, which is three times what they received under General Buhari’s regime.
Under President Tinubu, all six geopolitical zones now have development commissions, including the Northwest Development Commission, North-Central Development Commission, Northeast Development Commission, Southwest Development Commission, Southeast Development Commission, and the Niger Delta Development Commission.
These commissions have been receiving approximately ₦2.5 trillion annually under Tinubu, a new subvention they did not receive under the Buhari administration, because most of them did not even exist.
Over a million indigent Nigerian students are now receiving approximately ₦300 billion as loans under the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) initiative of President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.
Infrastructure: No other administration in the history of this nation has democratised road construction to the extent that the Tinubu government has done, simultaneously connecting the Southwest with the South-South via the 750-kilometre Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway being built for ₦15 trillion, linking the Northwest to the Southwest with the 1068-kilometre Illela-Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway costing ₦13 trillion, and bridging the gap between the Southeast and the entire North through the 465-kilometre Trans-Saharan Road is being constructed at a price of an estimated $750 million.
Although there are more, these are five tangible areas where you can see the subsidy savings at work. Before the Tinubu government was inaugurated, we had a paltry foreign reserve and most states had a several-month backlog of wages. Today, states are no longer owing salaries because of increased subventions from the Tinubu-led Federal Government.
Nigerians can feel the impact of three years of the Tinubu administration, which is the first time in our history that we have not experienced strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, because lecturers are now well paid, while students are receiving non-interest student loans.
The six regions now have their development commissions, and they are well funded. In addition, road and rail works are ongoing across all geopolitical zones.
So, with these facts in mind, it is a fallacy for anyone to say that the President ended the fuel subsidy regime, but you don’t know where the money saved from that wasteful programme went. The funds went towards improving your life and Human Development Index as a Nigerian through the initiatives listed above!
