Atiku: Tinubu’s Removal of Oil Subsidy is Economic Fraud Against Nigerians

*Says nothing can stop him from restoring targeted subsidy for suffering Nigerians

Chuks Okocha in Abuja

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has described President Bola Tinubu’s celebration of subsidy removal as one of the biggest economic frauds sold to Nigerians, stating that the administration cannot claim to have abolished subsidy while granting tax credits, concessions and other fiscal incentives to operators in the same petroleum industry.

Atiku said Tinubu and his gang of economic jesters have become increasingly desperate since the unveiling of the Atiku Economic Recovery Plan, attacking any suggestion of targeted intervention as though the mere removal of petrol subsidy were, by itself, an economic achievement.

In a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said the government’s propaganda collapsed under the weight of its own policies because the same administration that threw Nigerian households before the firing squad of market forces had repeatedly opened the fiscal toolbox to provide incentives for major petroleum investors.

The statement read:

“Tinubu stood at Eagle Square and declared that subsidy was gone. Petrol prices exploded, transportation costs soared, food prices followed, businesses buckled and household purchasing power collapsed. Nigerians were told there was no alternative and that enduring this pain was the necessary price of economic reform.

“But when major oil investors knock on Tinubu’s door, the sermon changes. Suddenly, government intervention is good economics; tax credits are necessary; fiscal concessions are strategic; and private investment must be ‘de-risked.’ Apparently, subsidy is only evil when poor Nigerians benefit from it.

“Under Tinubu’s own Deep Offshore Oil and Gas Projects Incentives framework, qualifying petroleum developments can receive production tax credits beginning at $3 and $4.50 per barrel, with supplementary credits capable, in qualifying circumstances, of taking the combined benefit to as much as $11.50 per barrel.

“So, what exactly is Tinubu’s objection: government intervention itself, or government intervention for Nigerians?

“Even more embarrassing is that nobody has performed greater verbal gymnastics around the Petroleum Industry Act than the Tinubu administration. Whenever Nigerians demand relief, its officials suddenly remember the PIA and preach that the era of subsidy is over. But the audited accounts of their own NNPC tell a dramatically different story.

“In 2023, NNPC’s accounts recorded approximately ₦4.84 trillion as energy-security expenses and related shortfalls, while its 2024 audited financial statements subsequently recorded about ₦7.13 trillion under energy-security expenses. NNPC itself explained that this expense arises partly from the difference between the exchange rate used to determine the regulated PMS ex-coastal price and the prevailing exchange rate when the import obligation is settled. In plain English, government was still absorbing a price differential after Tinubu had triumphantly announced that subsidy was gone.

“So, where exactly did the subsidy go? If Nigerians were paying market prices because ‘subsidy is gone,’ why was the Federation still carrying trillions of naira in under-recovery and energy-security costs? If such intervention was lawful and economically necessary when Tinubu authorised it, on what intellectual basis is Mr Tinubu and his spokesmen now abusing Atiku for proposing an intervention that is targeted, capped, budgeted, independently audited and beneficial to Nigerians?

“The deception becomes even more spectacular because NNPC officials themselves attempted to rename the elephant in the room. They said it was not subsidy but a ‘shortfall’ arising from PMS importation and the Federation’s pricing decisions. Nigerians do not eat semantics. Whether government calls it subsidy, under-recovery, shortfall or energy security, public resources were being used to bridge a gap between economic cost and the price at which petrol was sold. You cannot abolish subsidy at the podium and resurrect it in the accounts under an alias.

“This is the fraud at the heart of Tinubunomics. Nigerian families are subjected to the harshest interpretation of market economics while major petroleum investors are offered incentives to improve the commercial viability of their investments. Tinubu cannot operate two economies in one country —brutally savage capitalism for poor Nigerian families and compassionate capitalism for big oil money operators. In fact, it is one rule for them and another rule for the rest of us.

“The government can protect a multibillion-dollar oil investment from risk, yet it says protecting the Nigerian worker from crushing hardship is bad economics. It can bend policy to make every barrel of crude more profitable, but tells a struggling mother that making the litre of petrol she needs to take her children to school more affordable is irresponsible.

“That is not reform; it is an upside-down economy. A government cannot roll out the red carpet for rich oil operators while leaving its citizens to walk barefoot through hardship. What kind of economic reform protects corporate balance sheets before it protects the people whose sweat, taxes and sacrifices keep the country alive?

“This is precisely why the Atiku Economic Recovery Plan rejects Tinubu’s false choice between the corrupt subsidy regime of yesterday and the cruel shock therapy of today. Atiku is not proposing a return to an unlimited, opaque and corruption-ridden subsidy racket. What he proposes is a targeted, capped, transparently budgeted and independently audited intervention with a clearly defined exit mechanism, accompanied by accelerated domestic refining, competition, mass transportation and measures to restore household purchasing power.

“If Tinubu understands the logic of reducing the cost and risk borne by an investor in order to stimulate production, why does he suddenly become economically illiterate when the proposition is to temporarily reduce the crushing burden on Nigerian households? If government can legitimately de-risk investment, why is it economic heresy to de-risk survival?

“The hypocrisy becomes even more offensive because government can find incentives for capital but none for the commuter. It can provide fiscal cushions for petroleum investors while telling workers, traders, farmers and families to absorb every shock in the name of reform. This is the Tinubu doctrine: socialise the pain at the bottom and provide incentives at the top.

“Let nobody deliberately misrepresent our position. Atiku supports investment, including foreign investment, and recognises the place of transparent and performance-based incentives in attracting capital. But what we reject is the intellectual dishonesty of pretending that government intervention becomes sound economics when corporations benefit and economic ignorance when Nigerian citizens benefit.

“You cannot subsidise capital and criminalise relief for citizens. You cannot offer cushions upstairs and call suffering downstairs reform.

“Tinubu must also come clean on the cost of these concessions. Nigerians deserve to know the beneficiaries of major petroleum tax credits, remissions and incentives, the value of revenue surrendered, the investments delivered in return and whether Nigerian investors have equal and transparent access to comparable incentives. These concessions belong to the Nigerian people and must never become instruments of patronage dispensed behind closed doors.

“Economic reform is not a competition over how much suffering a President can impose on his citizens. Removing subsidy without adequate buffers while simultaneously providing fiscal cushions to investors in the same petroleum industry is not courage. It is selective economics dressed up as reform.

“Tinubu and his economic jesters should therefore stop advertising subsidy removal as though inflicting pain were an economic KPI. The test of economic reform is not how loudly a President announces that ‘subsidy is gone’; it is whether citizens are better off, businesses are productive, jobs are being created and household incomes can sustain basic living costs.

“The Atiku Economic Recovery Plan is founded on a fundamentally different philosophy: markets must work, investment must earn a fair return and public finances must be protected, but the Nigerian citizen must remain the ultimate beneficiary of economic policy.

“A government cannot preach unrestrained market forces to the poor while practising interventionist economics for his rich foreign friends. It cannot demand sacrifice from Nigerian families while extending concessions to powerful corporate interests. It cannot provide cushions for corporations and punishment for citizens and then call the resulting misery reform.

“That is not economic reform. It is classic economic apartheid.”