Odita Sunday 
I do not hate President Tinubu. I criticise his policies because I love Nigeria and cannot ignore the hardship Nigerians are enduring. Patriotism does not require silence when families struggle to eat, travel to work or pay for basic care.
Nigeria’s fuel subsidy needed reform. It was costly, vulnerable to abuse and often benefited those who needed help least. But a government cannot remove a protection on which millions depend without first protecting them from the consequences. The poor did not design the subsidy system, enable smuggling or profit from fraudulent claims. Yet they were made to pay for its failure through higher transport fares, food prices and business costs.
Government should have investigated those who abused the system, published a credible account of its costs and introduced a phased removal. Before prices rose sharply, it should have provided dependable public transport, targeted support for vulnerable households and practical help for farmers and small businesses.
We are told that the benefits of subsidy reform are being passed to state governments. Citizens must ask their governors: How much has your state received, and where has the money gone? Where are the roads, hospitals, schools, jobs and other improvements that should justify the sacrifices demanded of ordinary people?
No governor can morally defend an extravagant lifestyle while citizens bear those sacrifices without seeing development. Reports or evidence of public officials acquiring costly houses in Nigeria and abroad, buying luxury cars or funding lavish foreign trips for romantic partners deserve scrutiny. Public funds must never finance private indulgence. Where such spending comes from legitimate personal income, officials should be able to account for it; where it comes from the treasury, they should face prosecution.
Political loyalty must not become an insurance policy against accountability. Governors who defect to the ruling party in the belief that it will protect them from investigation or help return them to office regardless of how their people vote are showing contempt for democracy. If state power is used to shield wrongdoing or manipulate elections, that is authoritarian conduct, morally reprehensible and deserving of public condemnation.
Government should publish the subsidy savings and the amounts transferred to each state. Governors should publish what they received, what they spent and what citizens gained. Cash-transfer programmes need independent audits. Credible allegations of subsidy fraud, unexplained wealth and misuse of state funds must be investigated without regard to party affiliation.
A government has no moral right to demand sacrifice from the poor while those in power enjoy privilege without accountability. Reform succeeds when people can see it in affordable transport, functioning hospitals, reliable electricity, jobs and food on the table—not in the mansions and motorcades of public officials.
That is why I speak. Criticism is not hatred. It is a demand that reform be honest, humane and worthy of the Nigerian people.
Do not merely tell Nigerians that the economy is improving.
Show them in their kitchens. Show them in their electricity bills. Show them at the petrol station. Show them in their salaries. Show them in hospitals. Show them in schools. Show them on the roads. Show them through jobs. Show them through security.
Because the ultimate purpose of economic reform is not to produce beautiful statistics.
It is to produce better human lives.
And when citizens ask these questions, government should not interpret criticism as hatred.
I speak because Nigeria belongs to all of us. We question because we want the country to work. And sometimes the hardest truths are spoken not by those who hate you, but by those who love their country too much to remain silent.
Chris Okobah PhD
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