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The African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar has rejected President Bola Tinubu’s criticism of his proposed petroleum-sector intervention, accusing the administration of worsening economic hardship.
Atiku, through his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, said in a statement on Friday that Tinubu was in no position to lecture Nigerians on economic management after removing the petrol subsidy and liberalising the foreign exchange market.
“The real ignorance is believing suffering is economic policy. Tinubu removed the subsidy from Nigerians’ pockets, but he is yet to remove the questions from his books,” he said.
Atiku said his proposal was not a return to the old subsidy system but a temporary, targeted production-support scheme focused on increasing domestic refining and protecting consumers from sharp price increases.
“Economic prescriptions respond to prevailing conditions. But other things are no longer equal in Tinubu’s Nigeria,” he said.
He argued that removing the petrol subsidy without adequate measures to cushion its impact contributed to higher petrol prices, transport costs, food prices, and household expenses.
“Atiku is not proposing the resurrection of the corrupt, open-ended subsidy bazaar. He proposes a targeted, capped, budgeted, time-bound and independently audited production-support mechanism tied to domestic production and protected against arbitrage,” the statement said.
Atiku’s response followed Tinubu’s description of his proposal as a “demonstration of serious ignorance on governance and economy.”
The Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, also questioned the Nigerian Government’s handling of petroleum-sector finances, particularly the reported under-recoveries and energy-security costs involving the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC).
He cited figures of about ₦17.5 trillion, including ₦ 7.13 trillion in energy-security costs and ₦ 8.67 trillion in other reported obligations.
“If subsidy is dead, why are under-recoveries alive? If corruption was eliminated, why has opacity survived?” Atiku asked.
He also criticised the government’s argument that higher Federation Account allocations showed the success of its reforms.
Atiku said increased government revenue should not be celebrated as economic success if Nigerians were losing purchasing power at the same time.
“You do not build a federation by impoverishing citizens so that Abuja can send bigger cheques to governors,” he said.
He further questioned ₦30 trillion in Federation Account revenues, deductions, savings and transfers, as well as the ₦12.8tn Service-Wide Vote contained in the 2026 budget.
Atiku maintained that economic reforms should be judged by their impact on citizens, not the size of government revenues.
“Economic reform is not measured by how fat government accounts become while citizens grow poorer,” he said.
He accused the Tinubu administration of imposing hardship on Nigerians and urged citizens to reject what he described as another four years of policies that deepen economic suffering.
“Nigerians have paid enough for Tinubunomics. They should not be sentenced to another four years of the bitter experiment,” he stated.
