Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, has said he will reinstate petroleum subsidy if elected in 2027, but only after tackling corruption. He made the pledge on Monday, 28 September 2026, at a town hall meeting for the Obi/Kwankwaso ticket in Sokoto.
Obi framed subsidy and corruption as the same problem. “People are talking about subsidy but what is all about it is corruption. By removing the corruption, I assure you that we will bring back subsidy,” he said, according to his remarks at the event. He added that his administration would stop all forms of corruption across every sector of the country.
The pledge places a third major contender firmly in a debate that has come to define the early 2027 race. President Bola Tinubu’s removal of subsidy on 29 May 2023 remains the central economic dividing line, and both Obi and the African Democratic Congress candidate, Atiku Abubakar, have now committed to some form of return, though the two frame their plans differently. Atiku’s camp describes his proposal as a capped, budgeted and audited support scheme for domestic refining rather than a revival of the old import subsidy, while Obi ties any restoration directly to first cutting the graft he says inflated its cost.
Both positions run against the government’s stated line. Speaking at the State House in August, Tinubu called an opponent’s pledge to restore subsidy a “demonstration of a serious ignorance on governance and economy”, arguing that reversal would divert resources from development. The Finance Minister, Taiwo Oyedele, told a briefing that subsidy removal and the foreign exchange reforms produced estimated savings of N15.8 trillion, while acknowledging the reforms carried real costs for households.
The numbers explain why the promise carries weight in a place like Sokoto. The National Bureau of Statistics put the national average pump price at N1,596.25 a litre in its most recently published report, for May 2026, up 55.31 per cent from N1,027.76 a year earlier. Against the bureau’s May 2023 reading of N238.11, the month subsidy was removed, that is a rise of roughly 570 per cent, though the figure is lower than the eightfold jump sometimes quoted, which uses an older regulated price as its base.
Food prices have added to the pressure. NBS data show headline inflation easing for a second month to 15.43 per cent in July 2026, from 15.91 per cent in June, but food inflation moving the other way, rising to 20.31 per cent year on year from 17.52 per cent. For low income households, where most spending goes on food, that divergence means the wider slowdown has not yet reached the table.
Obi’s remarks, however, invite the same scrutiny facing his rivals. He did not state what a restored subsidy would cost, how it would be funded, or how quickly it would follow his anti corruption drive, and no figures were attached to the pledge at the Sokoto meeting. The Presidency has separately estimated Atiku’s plan at about N19.1 trillion a year, a projection the ADC dismissed as a “phantom figure” built on the government’s own assumptions. No independent costing of either opposition proposal has been published.
There is also an accounting question that predates the campaign. NNPC Limited’s audited statements record what it calls Energy Security Expense, incurred under Section 64(m) of the Petroleum Industry Act, at about N4.84 trillion in 2023, N7.13 trillion in 2024 and N8.67 trillion in 2025. The company maintains these are statutory costs rather than subsidy, though some analysts, including the immediate past president of the Organised Private Sector of Nigeria, Dele Oye, have described the liability as subsidy under another name. Obi’s argument that corruption sits at the heart of the subsidy bill draws on the same unresolved debate.
The pledge marks a shift in tone for Obi, who contested the 2023 election on the Labour Party platform and has generally supported removal in principle while criticising its execution. His running mate, Rabiu Kwankwaso, told the Sokoto gathering the visit was to seek residents’ support, and said the North West had become a major hotspot for banditry and kidnapping that an Obi government would work to curb.
For now, the significance lies in the alignment rather than the detail. Three of the leading contenders have staked out positions on subsidy, and the campaign has turned it into the first defining policy fight of 2027. What separates them, and whether any can put an audited cost to their promise, remains untested. The bureau’s next inflation and petrol price reports, along with the government’s own relief measures due from October, will supply the first hard evidence against which each pledge can be measured.