CPPE Urges FG to Deploy Targeted Relief Amid Petrol Price Hike to N1,430
The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has called on the Federal Government to urgently implement socially sensitive measures to cushion the impact of rising petrol prices after the recent increase from N1,300 to N1,430 per litre. In a policy brief issued on Sunday, CPPE CEO Dr. Muda Yusuf argued that targeted interventions would be more effective and fiscally sustainable than a return to the universal fuel subsidy regime, warning that restoring subsidies would reverse hard-won reforms and strain public finances.
Yusuf highlighted that the price surge affects transportation, logistics, electricity supply, food security, healthcare, education, and social protection, creating a broad cost-of-living and competitiveness challenge. He urged the government to channel subsidy removal savings into tangible benefits such as improved public transportation, rail freight infrastructure, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) projects, solar energy, and support for vulnerable households and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). On food security, he called for investment in irrigation, rural infrastructure, and agricultural logistics to boost domestic production and moderate food inflation.
He also demanded greater transparency in how federal, state and local governments use the additional fiscal resources from subsidy removal, insisting that accountability and expenditure quality—not the subsidy debate—should drive policy. The CPPE maintains that preserving downstream petroleum reforms while aggressively mitigating their social costs is the path to making the reform economically sustainable and socially defensible.
Will the government heed CPPE’s call for targeted relief and visible reinvestment of subsidy savings, or will mounting pressure force a reconsideration of the subsidy removal?