In a recent post on X (formerly Twitter), Taiwo Oyedele, Chairman of the Presidential Tax Reform Committee, defended the controversial 5% fuel surcharge by stating:
“The surcharge is not new. It already exists under the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (Amendment) Act, 2007. The new Tax Act only restates it for harmonisation and transparency.”
This defense is not only tone-deaf, it’s dangerously misleading. Yes, the surcharge may have existed on paper since 2007, but it was never enforced for good reason. Back then, petrol was subsidized at around ₦65 per litre. The government bore the cost, and successive Finance Ministers wisely chose not to burden citizens further with a fuel tax.
But the Nigeria of 2025 is a different reality. Since the full removal of fuel subsidy in May 2023, prices have exploded by over 1,300%. Nigerians now pay the full market rate, often exceeding ₦1,000 per litre, with zero cushioning from the government. To now revive a dormant tax designed for a subsidized economy is not just unfair, it’s exploitative.
❌ The Original Justification No Longer Exists
The 5% fuel surcharge was conceived as a way to recoup funds lost to subsidy payments and channel them into road maintenance. But that rationale has collapsed. The subsidy is gone. The government is no longer bleeding money at the pump. Instead, it’s saving trillions of naira annually, funds that should be transparently redirected to infrastructure, not siphoned from citizens already stretched to the brink.
Oyedele’s claim that “over 150 countries impose similar charges” is a hollow comparison. Many of those nations offer robust public transport, transparent governance, and social safety nets. Nigeria offers none of these. To equate our situation with theirs is to insult the intelligence and lived reality of millions of Nigerians.
Enforcing this surcharge now will worsen inflation, cripple logistics, and further punish the very people who keep the economy running, drivers, farmers, traders, and small business owners. Transport costs are already unbearable. Food prices are soaring. The 5% tax is not a surcharge, it’s a sentence.
Rather than frustrate citizens with archaic levies, the government should embrace the logic of subsidy removal: it was meant to ease fiscal pressure and end corruption. Now that citizens bear the full cost of fuel, they deserve relief, not a resurrection of outdated taxes.
If the government truly wants to fund road maintenance, it should use the massive savings from subsidy removal to fully finance FERMA. This would be a transparent, equitable, and economically sound approach. No more excuses. No more recycled burdens.
The 5% fuel tax is a relic of a bygone era. Its revival is unjustifiable, its timing indefensible, and its impact unbearable. It must be abolished, not harmonised, not delayed, not “clarified.” Abolished.