We never left Egypt, only prodigals need to return home, by Owei Lakemfa

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu told Nigerians on October 19, 2026, that they will not return to Egypt. He seems unaware that Egypt is our ancestral home and that we never left and will never leave. This Niger Area is the land of milk and honey we inherited from our fathers and mothers. We were never slaves in this land, will fight any attempt to enslave us; therefore, we never had any reason to flee. We never had any reason to part ways with the sea or for the sea to part ways for us. We never needed to wander in any desert for forty years or more, seeking pathways to freedom or prosperity. This has never been, and will never be, our portion in life.

Ancient Egypt is the origin of modern civilisation. It civilised the Greeks and Romans, who were its pupils before they passed that civilisation to the rest of Europe. The peoples who make up Nigeria were self-sufficient, with viable city-states and empires, and well-schooled in their non-Western education.

One of the natural endowments of this beautiful country is oil. We began producing it in commercial quantities from 1956–57. We were self-sufficient in it, including local refining, with the country running four refineries. As then Head of State Yakubu Gowon said in 1973: “Money is not Nigeria’s problem, but how to spend it.”

What has happened to Nigeria is not that oil has stopped flowing. It is not that the technology to refine sufficient petroleum products for local consumption and export has been lost. Rather, the tragedy we face is that we have had a mainly prodigal leadership since military rule began sixty years ago.

So, in our Egypt, we have sufficient oil reserves that will last at least the next sixty years. There was no fuel subsidy because we did not need to subsidise what we have. It is like asking a rich farmer with fertile soil and bursting barns of yam to subsidise the pounded yam his family will have for supper.

What has happened is that a prodigal political class took over, deliberately ran down the refineries, refused to build new ones and, most criminally, insisted on denominating fuel in inflated dollar accounting. Their paper accounting is based on our country having no drop of oil, which we all know is false, and having to import finished products which are bought by dubious officials from their chosen partners, pay freight, insurance, port fees, demurrage and storage fees. These products are then handed over to a cartel which transports them through deliberately neglected or abandoned roads and sells them to hapless Nigerians at rates imposed by the cartel. In this dubious process is built what is touted as subsidy.

Since the Babangida regime, this dubious subsidy mirage has been factored into our petroleum products. When the latest subsidy removal was touted on May 29, 2023, Nigerians were told the proceeds would be used for development. But what we have experienced is greater misery, multiplication of the hungry, dilapidating infrastructure, a rising number of out-of-school children, lack of mass housing, virtually abandoned basic healthcare and insecurity. Whenever we ask the administration what has been done with the so-called subsidy savings, it points at increasing the revenue allocation to states and local governments. It is aware that most leaders of these tiers are like cats being told to watch over fried fish. Deceptively, it does not point at itself as being the largest recipient of these extra funds, which remain unaccounted for.

When President Tinubu announced that his administration had removed fuel subsidy, the price of a litre of PMS was increased from about N197 to an average N500. Today, it is thrice that price, and the government blames this insanity on the war in Iran. In this, the Tinubu government is behaving like the dirty widow with head lice creeping all over her hair who blames this on mourning her husband by not allowing a drop of water to touch her head since his demise. If the Nigerian government blames the war in Iran for the outrageous price of PMS in the country, why is Iran, which has suffered the catastrophe of having its leadership wiped out, children buried under the rubble of their classrooms, infrastructure and oil facilities bombed and punishing sanctions imposed by the United States, not been similarly affected?

Honourable Victor Afam Oghene, Member, Federal House of Representatives, Ogbaru Constituency of Anambra State, debunked, with verifiable statistics, these childish fairy tales of the Tinubu government. He gave comparative statistics of PMS prices in four oil-producing countries: Iran, which has been at war for years; Libya, which has suffered state collapse since 2011 and had at least three factional governments in Tobruk, Tripoli and Benghazi; Saudi Arabia, which is engaged in war with neighbouring Yemen; and Nigeria, which is not at war. In his statistics, which the increasingly intolerant Tinubu government and its army of internet propagandists have not been able to fault, Honourable Oghene revealed that a litre of PMS in Iran is N38, Libya, N32, Saudi Arabia, N832, and Nigeria, at least N1,300. In contrast, the National Minimum Wage in Iran is N165,000, Libya is N210,000, Saudi Arabia, N1.4 million, and N70,000 in Nigeria! Oghene then analysed these basic statistics in value terms. He showed that the minimum wage in Iran can purchase 4,242 litres of PMS, Libya, 6,562 litres, Saudi Arabia, 1,700, and only 46 litres in Nigeria!

Tragically, despite such sound analysis and the situation in the country, the Tinubu administration appears increasingly irritated, deaf to the cries of Nigerians and incapable of basic thinking. For instance, rather than examine the arguments of various patriots and pro-people activists on the issue of fuel subsidy and the calamitous effects on the populace, it is threatening Nigerians with dire consequences. In its unfathomable scare-mongering, the administration’s Minister of Finance, Taiwo Oyedele, threatened that even an inkling of the administration rethinking the subsidy issue would trigger capital flight. This, he claimed, would lead to the naira, which has already been devalued over fifty per cent by Tinubu, suffering a further sixty per cent devaluation. Oyedele told Nigerians this fable, not based on any analysis, but beliefs. He also claimed that this would raise the price of petrol to at least N2,000 per litre. Even as a product of Yale University and London School of Economics, and an advertised policy expert, the Honourable Minister could not provide the cost component of this his projected N2,000-per-litre PMS.

We Nigerians never left our Egypt, so there is no issue of a return. It is the prodigals of the political class that need to return home, ask for forgiveness and stop suffocating the country.