By Abidemi Adebamiwa
President Bola Tinubu’s decision to consider relief for domestic airlines over soaring Jet A1 fuel costs has exposed a deeper contradiction in Nigeria’s economic management. While the government is moving to cushion the impact of the crisis on airlines, millions of Nigerians who do not fly continue to bear the same fuel-driven hardship without meaningful relief. The trader moving goods by road, the farmer transporting produce to market, the worker struggling with daily fares, and the family battling food inflation are all victims of the same crisis. Their pain may be less visible than that of airline operators, but it is far more widespread and severe.
I say this with a real appreciation for aviation and what it means to national growth. Having helped float an airline before, and with more than 20 hours of flight time under my belt, I understand that this is not a business sustained by sentiment or goodwill alone. It is a difficult, capital-intensive sector where fuel costs, exchange rate pressures, regulatory burdens, and financing constraints can quickly push operators into distress. That is why I do not dismiss the urgency behind government intervention in the industry.
But that is also what makes this moment so troubling. Nigeria is an oil-producing country, yet its citizens are being asked to absorb relentless fuel-linked suffering in the name of reform and fiscal discipline. Subsidy removal has been defended as a hard but necessary economic choice, even as it continues to deepen hardship across the economy. When a policy inflicts mass pain on ordinary people but suddenly becomes flexible when a strategic or elite-facing sector comes under pressure, its logic begins to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.
The truth is that this may be politically expedient, but it is not economically wise. A government cannot keep using public suffering as proof of seriousness while ignoring the corruption, inefficiency, and poor sequencing that have done far more damage than subsidy alone. It cannot continue making millions of Nigerians suffer merely to save face or preserve the appearance of ideological consistency. That is not reform in any meaningful sense, but a form of selective compassion that protects the visible while neglecting the vulnerable.
I support efforts to keep domestic airlines alive because aviation matters to commerce, connectivity, and national development. But real reform cannot be selective, and relief cannot remain the privilege of sectors that command access and attention. If airlines deserve emergency support because costs have become unbearable, then the same government must admit that life has become unbearable for millions of Nigerians who may never enter an airport, but who keep the economy running every day.
Abidemi Adebamiwa is a student pilot and Managing Editor of Newspot Nigeria.
