Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has launched a counter-attack against President Bola Tinubu, accusing his administration of confusing public hardship with economic reform and committing “economic arson followed by propaganda about the ashes.”
The clash follows statements from the Presidency labelling Atiku’s newly unveiled Economic Recovery Plan (AERP 2027)—which proposes replacing import-based fuel subsidies with targeted production support for domestic refiners—as a “demonstration of serious ignorance on governance and economy” and an opportunistic volte-face ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
Firing back through a statement issued on Friday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku rejected the Presidency’s characterisation, arguing that the administration’s policy execution had delivered “the worst of both worlds”.
“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,” Atiku said. “Tinubu has given Nigerians the worst of both worlds: he removed the relief but retained the opaque costs. Nigerians got the pain; government kept the bill.”
‘Economic Arson, Not Reform’
The former vice president defended his proposal, insisting it is not a return to the open-ended, corrupt subsidy bazaar of the past, but rather a “targeted, capped, budgeted, time-bound and independently audited production-support mechanism” tied directly to domestic refining output.
Atiku challenged the government’s assertion that fuel subsidies have been completely eliminated, referencing multi-trillion naira financial obligations that linger within the energy sector.
“If subsidy is dead, why are under-recoveries alive? If corruption was eliminated, why has opacity survived?” Atiku questioned. “Economic reform is not measured by how fat government accounts become while citizens grow poorer. An economy exists to serve human beings, not family and friends.”
He rejected the administration’s celebration of higher Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) distributions to state governments, characterising the reliance on central disbursements as “fiscal sedation and rascality.”
“A government that grows richer while its citizens grow poorer is not reforming an economy. It is extracting from its people,” the statement added. “You do not build a federation by impoverishing citizens so that Abuja can send bigger cheques to governors. That is robbing households to subsidise governments.”
The Presidency’s Stance
The dispute was triggered after Presidential Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, issued a statement condemning Atiku’s proposal to intervene in fuel pricing.
“Against expectations that he would announce a more creative and ingenious alternative to the programme being executed by the Tinubu administration, Atiku Abubakar behaved like a man from an archaic past who least comprehends the present economic dynamics,” Onanuga stated. “Desperate for power, he needed to make a promise that he knew… does not make fiscal sense, is retrogressive, and is against the genuine interest of the people.”
The Presidency maintained that the Petrol Industry Act (PIA) framework ended the unpredictable burden on public finances, and urged political leaders to present the full fiscal and legal implications of any proposal to restore petroleum subsidies.
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