By Wole Olujobi
Gradually, Nigeria is returning to the inglorious days of old when evil men plotted the downfall of their societies and fellow men in order to achieve personal success. Those in this league include Haman in the Bible, who planned to kill all Jewish people in the Persian Empire because one man would not bow to him in the grandeur of his power. His plan failed, and he lost his life.
Judas Iscariot desired riches. For that, he tricked and sold out Jesus Christ for 30 pieces of silver. He later felt deep regret after seeing the outcome. He committed suicide.
Jezebel lied and had an innocent man, Naboth, killed so her husband could steal his land. She paid for her treachery through gruesome end when she was thrown out of a palace window by her own servants, trampled by horses, and largely devoured by stray dogs, leaving behind only her skull, feet, and hand.
The Roman conspirators, Brutus and Cassius, planned the murder of Julius Caesar in the Senate to stop him from taking total power and in order for them to keep their own status. Brutus and Cassius became the victims of mob attacks over ambition to face gruesome end in the Roman history.
In the Quran, Abu Lahab was the uncle of Prophet Muhammad who actively opposed, mocked, and persecuted the early Muslims over personal ambition. He was condemned in Surah Al-Lahab.
Also, Samiri in the Quran was the rebellious individual who led the children of Israel astray by crafting a golden calf to worship while Prophet Musa (Moses) was away on Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. He suffered banishment for his rebellion against Musa and God.
Here in Nigeria, rebellion by individuals against the state and fellow Nigerians to climb to power by wasting innocent people’s lives to achieve that goal is not new. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and General Oladipo Diya were to be executed to allow General Sani Abacha consummate his life presidency gambit, but fate, a cruel trickster, played his last jokes on him: he allegedly collapsed in the laps of the battery of prostitutes he harboured in the Aso Rock brothel and bade farewell to the traumatised Nigerians he subjected to inhuman conditions.
Ambition is such an evil that takes away humanity from man in his power chase enterprise in the competiting marketplace of interests where individuals struggle for survival and pursuit of dreams to create great legacies.
In the power chase ahead of the 2027 presidential election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the ADC has continued to break records as a politician of anything goes in pursuit of power to higher glory after he got tired of making money. This time, climbing to power at all costs seems a consuming ambition via overreach and hubris. To achieve that, he has announced that his economic policy if elected president will be anchored on the restoration of fuel subsidy: the policy that arrested the nation’s development over the years, leaving the soul of the nation’s economic life inane, and many Nigerians practically eating at dump sites to ease the pangs of hunger.
Though dangerous, yet a potent trap for the unwary Nigerians to help Atiku to power, the ADC’s candidate’s method is erasing the gains by the new administration policy on subsidy removal after Atiku and his party helped to dig dishonourable economic grave for the nation as Vice President between 1999 and 2007 when he led a fraudulent privatisation of 147 prime Nigeria’s enterprises at a giveaway prices to alleged cronies in a mindless round-tripping scheme that claimed hundreds of thousands of jobs and opening opportunities for top leaders to appropriate the nation’s patrimony.
For instance, the
Aluminium Smelting Company in Akwa Ibom, (ALSCON), which Nigeria built with $3.2 billion, was sold to a Russian firm, Russal, an alleged Atiku’s front, for $130million.
In his privatisation bazaar to alleged cronies, Atiku also sold Port Harcourt Refinery in 2007 in an election year he hoped to succeed Obasanjo in Aso Rock, but God saved Nigerians. He lost that election on the ticket of ACN. Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua of PDP won. Yar’Adua quickly came to the rescue of Nigerians by reversing the sale of the Port Harcourt Refinery because, according to him, it was not in the interest of the nation.
The sale of NEPA that Atiku supervised was in his exclusive favour, for after NEPA privatisation, public power sector collapsed, and from its ashes emerged Mikano Generators; Atiku’s private answer to the collapse of public energy supply in Nigeria, as Mikano powered Nigeria and her businesses until President Bola Ahmed Tinubu recently emerged with his energy reform policy aided by fuel subsidy removal that now allows the new government to pump massive funds into the energy sector to return light to Nigerians’ homes and regular light to power industries.
That lift in favour of Nigerians seems to hurt Atiku and his Mikano monopoly, hence he must return to subsidy years of energy monopoly by Mikano to feather his nest.
From the savings from subsidy withdrawal, Tinubu recently approved N435bn special fund for states for security and infrastructure.
In the last few years, terrorists and bandits seized the nation by the throat, as bandits and terrorists seized large swathes of the nation’s territories, forcing farmers off the farms, even as billions in ransoms are paid to bandits. Savings from subsidy aided the Federal Government to raise funds to tackle the security threats
Besides, removing the fuel subsidy has stopped massive government debts. It saves trillions of naira, and stops illegal fuel smuggling to other countries. It frees up money for public services, such as health, schools, and roads, while helping private companies build local oil refineries.
It has also led to fiscal and revenue growth, as the policy generated about ₦15.8 trillion in extra resources for the federation between June 2023 and December 2025.
Other benefits include higher allocations to state and local governments. They now receive larger federal allocations to fund local projects and pay worker salaries, while also lowering borrowing, as the government relies less on heavy foreign and local debts to cover yearly budget shortfalls.
Subsidy removal has also strengthened market and energy reforms, as a
free market encourages investors to build and run local refineries instead of importing all finished fuel.
It has also stopped smuggling, as higher market-reflecting prices stop criminal networks from smuggling cheap Nigerian petrol across nearby borders, while private business growth in the energy sector has created new jobs for young people. All these are for the benefit of ordinary Nigerians, who unfortunately, some of the nation’s leaders have lost touch with. Or who do not matter to the leaders in the nation’s scheme of development.
Even though with all these fuel subsidy gains, they also came with their pains as a compulsory side effect of breaking away from the past of visionless administrations that thrived in tokenism, even as the nation collapsed, building a society that holds no promise for the young generations of Nigerians.
Even though subsidy removal was the major economic plank of Atiku’s campaign in 2023, that destructive subsidy past must be embraced now by the unfeeling exploitation of the temporary pains among Nigerians, to manipulate them back into deeper pains of subsidy regime through which callous Nigerian leaders ruined the nation’s economy to destroy the future of young Nigerians while building their own future and that of their children.
What Atiku is planning for Nigerians is not different from what Samiri in Quran did to lead the children of Israel astray by crafting a golden calf to worship. Atiku’s subsidy restoration is nothing but a new golden calf being promoted for personal glory whole millions of Nigerians suffer the consequences.
For creating golden calf for the Israelites, about 3,000 rebellious men were killed by the Levites as punishment, while God also sent a plague upon the people. May Atiku’s golden calf in fuel subsidy restoration not kill the burgeoning Nigerian economy being nurtured by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu or maim young Nigerians in their thirst for brighter future!
* Olujobi, journalist and former Deputy Director of Media and Communications of BAO Campaign Organisation, writes from Ado-Ekiti
