Political Economy of Petroleum Subsidy Reform and Renewable Energy Transition in Nigeria: A Critical Analysis

Nigeria's petroleum subsidy regime has consumed fiscal resources that could have financed transformative renewable energy investment, and its partial removal in 2023 represents a pivotal political economy juncture whose implications for the country's energy transition trajectory require theoretically rigorous and empirically grounded analysis. This study conducts a critical political economy analysis of the relationship between petroleum subsidy reform and renewable energy transition in Nigeria, applying historical institutionalism, rent theory, and energy justice frameworks to examine how subsidy political economy has shaped and constrained the renewable energy sector's development over two decades. The research design employs process tracing over the period 2003 to 2025, drawing on 74 elite interviews with policymakers, subsidy technocrats, oil industry actors, renewable energy investors, and civil society leaders, supplemented by archival research in government budgets, subsidy audit reports, and parliamentary records. An original analytical framework integrating fiscal space analysis, political economy mapping, and energy justice assessment is developed to structure comparative analysis of subsidy reform episodes. Findings demonstrate that subsidy reform episodes have consistently failed to release fiscal space for renewable energy investment due to the dominance of extractive petroleum rents over development finance logics within Nigeria's federal fiscal architecture. Post-2023 reform analysis reveals emerging opportunities for renewable energy finance but structural risks of subsidy re-entrenchment. The study makes an original contribution to political economy theory of energy transitions in resource-dependent states. Keywords: political economy, petroleum subsidy, renewable energy transition, Nigeria, historical institutionalism.