By Abidemi Adebamiwa
When a government drives people into hunger, no broadcast or press release can change what they feel. The removal of fuel subsidy stripped away what little stability many families held on to. For those already struggling, the issue is not who wins the next election. It is how to eat today and how to survive tomorrow.
Families who have lost loved ones, or who fear losing them to poverty, sickness, or hunger, are not paying attention to political speeches. What they hear is the sound of empty pots, the cries of their children, and the silence of parents who no longer know how to provide. They see the price of transport and food rising while incomes remain the same. For them, survival has replaced politics as the priority.
The problem was never subsidy removal itself but the way it was carried out. A president with advisers who see figures as people would have phased it out carefully, with real support in place for the poor. The government did announce palliatives, including cash transfers and state relief measures, but many Nigerians saw little of it in practice. People were left to face rising transport fares and food costs with almost no cushioning.
This is why spin rings hollow. Leaders who measure decisions only through the loyalty of those around them make mistakes that punish the public. Removing subsidy without effective protection is not reform. It is cruelty.
Although Femi Gbajabiamila has said “the benefits of fuel subsidy removal will be reaped soon” and that the President knows what he is doing, mothers skipping meals so their children can eat are not comforted by the promise of “soon.” Fathers stranded without the means to take sick relatives to the hospital cannot wait for benefits that remain out of reach. Families need relief in the present, not speeches about the future. Hunger does not pause while government asks for patience.
Keynes captured this truth in A Tract on Monetary Reform in 1923 when he wrote: “The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.” His warning is a reminder that delayed promises are meaningless to people drowning in today’s storm.
Food, medicine, and dignity are what people are looking for. Speeches and spin cannot take their place. Relief must be real, not theoretical. A government that ignores this lesson will only deepen the suffering of its people.
*Abidemi Adebamiwa is a political analyst and Managing Editor at Newspot Nigeria.*
