A Full Purse And Empty Plates: What The APC Government Did With $100 Oil
BY INWALOMHE DONALD
…A federal government holding the fullest purse in a decade has sent Mr Henry Dele Alake back to 2015 to explain 2026
…The numbers from this year have their own answer.
THE federal government is enjoying $100 oil and record revenue, and it has sent Mr Henry Oladele Alake to argue about 2015. Ask yourself why a government this rich needs a history lesson. Here is the arithmetic it would rather skip. Brent crude trades above $100 a barrel this October, up more than 50 per cent since January, FAAC has been sharing record sums, and the petrol subsidy is gone. Yet 17.9 million more Nigerians slipped into multidimensional poverty between 2021 and 2024, food inflation reached 20.31 per cent year on year in July, and petrol averaged N1,596 a litre in May against about N185 before the reform. When a government holds every card and the people still go hungry, the public deserves to hear where the cards went.I have decided to join Mr Alake in the archive, because it holds a room worth revisiting.
On 22 January 2014, a committee room in the House of Commons filled with British parliamentarians, development experts and one governor from Nigeria. Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola had come at the invitation of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development and Imperial College London’s Partnership for Child Development to explain how a state with a modest purse feeds its children. His programme, O’MEALS, reached over 240,000 pupils in 1,328 government schools, and the room commended it as a model worth copying. Mr Alake, a close associate of the governor at the time, formed part of the entourage that day. We return to that room at the end, because it explains everything in between.
Every government meets storms, and the test is what it delivers while the storm is blowing. Strip away the speeches and four questions remain. Did it keep people safe? Did it spread prosperity to as many households as possible? Did it protect dignity and open the door to wealth? Did it give citizens a reason to believe in tomorrow? Osun under Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola answered with results that outside observers measured. In 2018, the UNDP and the National Bureau of Statistics recorded the lowest poverty incidence in Nigeria in Osun, at 17.5 per cent against a national figure of 53.7 per cent. On jobs, NBS data placed Osun second lowest in unemployment in the first quarter of 2017, at 4.1 per cent behind Katsina, and kept it among the ten lowest states through the third quarter of 2018. The 2018 Nigeria Peace Index named Osun the most peaceful state in the country. Safe streets, families in work and a poverty rate the rest of Nigeria envied add up to a mandate delivered.
Within months of that applause, the oil market gave way. Brent crude sold above $100 a barrel in 2014, lost more than 60 per cent of its value in eighteen months, and dipped below $30 in early 2016. FAAC allocations fell 33.8 per cent between June 2014 and January 2015. By May 2015, the Federal Government had drawn N473 billion of its N882 billion borrowing allowance to cover recurrent spending, and the governor of Imo State told reporters that Abuja had yet to pay its own April salaries. In July 2015, 29 states took a federal bailout loan to keep their workers paid. Every state sat the same exam paper, and the Federal Government sat it on borrowed money.
Osun faced the same storm in a smaller boat, and chose a temporary, grade based arrangement agreed with the labour unions over mass retrenchment. Workers on Grade Levels 1 to 7, about 72 per cent of the workforce, received full pay. Levels 8 to 12, about 20 per cent, received 75 per cent. Level 13 and above, the remaining 8 per cent, received 50 per cent. Nearly three in four workers drew every naira, and every worker kept a job. Ogbeni declined a salary throughout his 96 months in office, which left the captain with the lightest purse on board. Full pay returned in July 2018, and the state paid out arrears and pensions before the tenure ended. Hard times reveal a leader, and Osun’s answer protected jobs, kept the peace and left the poverty table with its name at the top.
Look closer at where the present purse came from. Brent crude now trades at more than triple its early 2016 low, and the surge followed escalating tensions in the Middle East while Abuja watched from the stands. FAAC shared a record N18.54 trillion in the first ten months of 2025, and the June 2026 distribution of N2.55 trillion was the highest monthly share this year. The petrol subsidy ended, and estimates put the annual savings near N10 trillion.
The administration’s contribution to the oil price matches ours, which is the contribution of a spectator. Prosperity that arrives from abroad is luck, and luck delivers the prize while governing decides what the prize buys.
Here sits the irony worth framing. A government handed the fullest purse in a decade by events overseas presides over a poverty scorecard written at home. The 2026 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index from the UNDP and OPHI counts 90.1 million Nigerians in multidimensional poverty in 2024, up from 72.2 million in 2021, with the poverty rate climbing from 33.0 to 38.7 per cent. Insecurity continues to keep farmers away from their fields, which helps explain why a record purse and a rising food bill sit side by side.
Oil climbed because of events abroad, while poverty climbed because of decisions at home. Osun held its line with oil near $30, and the present administration, with oil above $100, watches millions join the ranks of the poor. Both sat the same exam, and one had the thinner purse. Mr Alake chose 2015 as his exhibit, and with 2026 on the table that is a courageous selection.
Return to that committee room in January 2014, where parliamentarians applauded a plate of food served by a state whose priorities were a child’s lunch, a worker’s job and a neighbourhood’s safety. Mr Alake heard that applause, so he knows what a government sounds like when it delivers.
Today the room is the whole of Nigeria, and the audience keeps its hands in its pockets. Hardship reveals a leader and plenty reveals a government. Osun sat the first test with a thin purse and finished at the top of the table. The present administration sits the second with the fullest purse in a decade, and its examiner is the memory of the people, which oil prices leave untouched. Nigerians have lived both stories. They remember which government fed them, secured them and gave them reason to dream. In 2027, they hold the pen.
Donald Inwalomhe writes from Benin City, the capital of Edo State.
