When the war in the Gulf region started a couple of weeks ago, all Nigerians thought of was how many more dollars the country would be earning from each barrel of crude oil sold in the international market. Our lives are tied to the prices of oil, to which everything else we do is tied.

If anyone thought of the afterlife of the Gulf War for Nigerians and the Nigerian government, it was perhaps in terms of the question the people would be asking of what the Bola Tinubu government makes of the crude oil windfall. That was the kind of conversation that followed ‘The Mother of all Battles’ in 1991, when all Nigerians wanted to know from the Ibrahim Babangida regime was what happened to the $12 billion the country made from its sales of crude during the Gulf War of 1991 and the termination of the Babangida regime in 1994. 

Whatever Professor Pius Okigbo saw or didn’t see that led to him first asking that question now belongs to the ages. The fact is that the question that led to the damning report of his panel remains unanswered or is without a definite answer to this day, more than a quarter of a century since he made his farewells to Nigerians in the year 2000. The answers are probably still hiding in the hidden accounts into which the funds were allegedly paid. Some analysts even wonder if the entire question was not predicated on bureaucratic gossips. As for the ongoing war, however, nobody thought of it bringing us anything other than more money in our coffers. As was the case in 1990/1991. To have thought otherwise would have been perverse. 

We looked at our budget, brought out our calculators to find out how much more its performance could be enhanced with unexpected oil revenue. The talk was about how well Abuja could utilise the inflow of dollars given the contested performance of the two previous budgets that have been running alongside the 2026 appropriation. Then a barrel of crude was sold for about $67. But in the eleven days since the war started, the pump price of petrol which stood at just over N800 per litre in Nigeria has somersaulted four times in less than a week. We have been caught in the paroxysm of the deadly tango among combatants far removed from our shores. The national horizon is looming with questions of everyday survival that will not be answered by the number of governors who have defected into the rank of the ruling APC. No, these questions will not bow to the anxieties of those worried about the survival of the PDP or if the ADC can still meet its membership drive.

These questions take us back to the uncertain months of the Muhammadu Buhari currency change debacle. We are returning to where we were in the early months after President Tinubu washed the hands of his government off the payment of oil subsidy and unified the currency market. These were actions his opponents committed themselves to before the 2023 election. Although they have tried to modify their position and have been very critical of the ‘timing’ of the policies, they have not been able to offer credible alternatives. Not even now that they are in a political wilderness, lost and confused about their own future. They cannot be trusted to ask the type of questions that a dynamic opposition should be asking an overweening governing party that could soon take the apparent collapse of the opposition for license. For them, everything is politics to be played like a game without principles. Or much like a round of chess in which Nigerians are mere pawns. 

It is the reason a former governor, Kayode Fayemi and his friends in the ACN, opposed the Goodluck Jonathan government’s planned removal of oil subsidy in 2012, called it a hoax but embraced it in 2023. That was why an Ahmadu Fintiri, Governor of Adamawa State, who moved the motion for the doomed national convention of the PDP that was held in Ibadan in flagrant disregard of a subsisting court judgement in November 2025, is now in March 2026 a member of the APC. It was why Rotimi Amaechi could ask Peter Obi to swear at the altar of Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Maitama, Abuja, if Obi actually believed he didn’t win the contest to be the chair of the bitterly-contested Governors Forum election in 2015. The former LP now ADC leader balked at the idea of swearing but he was quick to remind his interlocutor of what he was pretending to have forgotten. “Not now, it’s politics!” he said. 

Nigerians must ask what the Tinubu-led government intends to do about the galloping price of petrol now the APC has been transformed into a behemoth that controls about 32 of the 36 states of the federation, and we are being called upon to tell the difference between six and half a dozen among politicians who are here today and there tomorrow. They are politicians and they do no more than play politics- even with the lives of Nigerians. Was he not playing politics when Daniel Bwala left APC just months before the 2023 presidential election to join the PDP where he uttered with evangelistic aplomb the lies he has now been forced to swallow against his current principal, Bola Tinubu? He spoke then to the warm approval of most of today’s critics of his Al Jazeera interview. They too are playing politics, excited as they are at his embarrassment, not because he lied but because he is now with their enemy. 

Nigerians are hurting as the Gulf war rages on. Fuel stations are selling at between N1,200 to N1,400, per litre, taking us back to 2024. We know what this means for inflation- transportation, food and services. A barrel of crude oil now sells in the region of $120. But what is the point of amassing dollars at the international market while Nigerians cry at home? We are the children of butchers who should not be found eating bones. We are among the world’s highest producers of crude oil. We also have one of the world’s best refineries, the Dangote Refinery, to add value to it.   

But for the callous insensitivity of some of our people, especially the wealthiest, whose assets are directly proportional to their unconscionable exploitation of Nigerians, we shouldn’t be discussing the issue of the government taking its hand off subsidies. No government does that! They can call it any name but the Tinubu government should immediately ensure the provision of crude for Dangote to ensure seamless sales of affordable petrol. If the price cannot fall, it should not rise.