The Federal Government has said the removal of petrol subsidy and reforms to the foreign exchange market generated an additional N15.8tn for the Federation between June 2023 and December 2025.
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, disclosed this on Wednesday at a media briefing on the government’s reform scorecard, titled, “The Benefits, Costs and Harm Prevented.”
Oyedele explained that the N15.8tn did not appear as a separate entry labelled subsidy savings in the Federation Account. Instead, he said the benefits of the reforms were reflected through increased revenue collections resulting from the changes in the exchange rate and the removal of subsidy-related distortions.
“Between June 2023 and December 2025, subsidy savings mobilised a sum of N15.8tn in resources for the Federation,” Oyedele said.
Addressing questions about where the subsidy savings went, the minister said there was no specific Federation Account line item for the funds.
“Many people will say, ‘Where is the subsidy saving?’ As a matter of fact, there wasn’t any line in the Federation Account with the description, ‘subsidy savings.’
“So, the subsidy savings showed up in the form of higher collection by Customs because, for every one dollar of import duty before, at N460, it became one dollar at N1,004, N1,003, N1,005.
“The NRS, Petroleum Profit Tax that it collected before, same dollar, higher amount in naira. So, the savings showed up in the Federation accounts by way of higher revenue collections as a result of the reforms.”
Oyedele stressed that the additional resources were not attributable to petrol subsidy removal alone. He said the foreign exchange reforms also eliminated what he described as an implicit subsidy created by the previous exchange-rate regime.
He said, “Not just the subsidy removal, but also the exchange rate flotation, because we were subsidising the exchange rate. And that subsidy was not going to the ordinary person or manufacturers. It was going to rent-seekers.”
The minister added that states and local governments received the larger share of the additional resources generated by the reforms.
