Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has fired back at President Bola Tinubu over his stance on removal of fuel subsidy, saying the present administration’s purported economic reform amounted to economic arson.
Atiku, who is the presidential candidate of African Democratic Congress (ADC), questioned the president’s capacity on Nigeria’s economy, noting that any government that grows richer while its citizens grow poorer should not be applauded for reforming the economy.
The former Vice President made the declaration in a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, in apparent reaction to Tinubu’s remarks that he was ignorant on governance and economy.
The president had, while receiving the Governor of Osun State, Ademola Adeleke, at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja on Thursday, slammed Atiku for vowing to restore the fuel subsidy regime scrapped three years ago by his administration.
But reacting, Atiku said there was an almost comical audacity in Tinubu calling anyone economically ignorant after presiding over an economy where government revenues have ballooned while citizens’ purchasing power has collapsed.
He berated the president for allegedly mistaking the Nigerians’ capacity to endure suffering for evidence that his policies are working.
“If economic ignorance had a presidential seal, Tinubu and his family would be its official logo,” the statement quoted Atiku as saying.
“Here is an administration that detonated simultaneous fuel-price, exchange-rate and cost-of-living shocks across a fragile economy, watched millions become poorer, and now struts around Abuja demanding applause for the wreckage.”
“That is not reform. It is economic arson followed by propaganda about the ashes.
“Tinubu’s courtiers may clap because FAAC allocations have increased, but hungry Nigerians cannot boil FAAC figures for dinner. Businesses cannot power factories with presidential speeches, workers cannot pay transport fares with macroeconomic grammar, and parents cannot settle school fees with statistics manufactured for State House applause.
“A government that grows richer while its citizens grow poorer is not reforming an economy. It is extracting from its people.
“Tinubu should therefore spare Nigerians the economics lecture. A man who set the house on fire cannot ridicule another man for redesigning the fire extinguisher,” he said.
Atiku’s statement read: “Tinubu and his gang of jesters should acquaint themselves with elementary economics before accusing anyone of ignorance. Economic prescriptions respond to prevailing conditions. Even a first-year economics student understands ceteris paribus — other things being equal.
“But other things are no longer equal in Tinubu’s Nigeria.
“Apparently fresh from a bowl of amala, Tinubu mounted the podium at Eagle Square and casually declared that ‘subsidy is gone’ without a credible transition plan or adequate protection against the inflationary consequences.
“Those three words were not economic policy. They were economic vandalism by presidential fiat.
“Petrol prices exploded. Transportation and production costs followed. The naira depreciated sharply. Food prices soared. Businesses buckled and household purchasing power was decimated.
“Having destroyed the economic assumptions upon which previous prescriptions rested, Tinubu’s propagandists now accuse Atiku of inconsistency for responding to the disaster they created.
“That is not inconsistency. That is economics. Only incompetence insists on yesterday’s prescription after today’s conditions have changed.
“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 difference is simple: Tinubu pronounced first and searched for a plan afterwards. Atiku studied the consequences and produced a solution.
“But there is an even greater hypocrisy in Tinubu’s subsidy sermon.
“Tinubu told Nigerians subsidy was dead. Yet NNPC’s audited accounts reportedly contain approximately ₦17.5 trillion in energy-security costs and petroleum under-recoveries, including about ₦7.13 trillion classified as Energy Security and ₦8.67 trillion in under-recoveries.
“So what exactly did Tinubu remove?
“If subsidy is dead, why are under-recoveries alive? If corruption was eliminated, why has opacity survived?
“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.
“But there is an even greater hypocrisy in Tinubu’s subsidy sermon.
“Now that Tinubu tells Nigerians that one of the great achievements of subsidy removal is that states which previously struggled to pay salaries now receive larger FAAC allocations, he must realise that this argument is economically shallow and, worse still, an admission of developmental failure.”
“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.
“If the price Nigerians must pay for governors to meet their basic obligations is crushing transport costs, diminished purchasing power, food inflation and deepening poverty, then Tinubu has merely transferred solvency from the kitchen tables of ordinary families to government treasuries.
“Worse still, this FAAC bonanza creates the wrong incentives. States should develop competitive economies, attract investment, exploit their comparative advantages, broaden their productive tax bases and create wealth. Instead, Tinubu is deepening an Abuja dependency economy where governors can wait every month for increasingly fat allocations from the centre.
“Why undertake difficult reforms, industrialise or expand productive capacity when Abuja provides an ever-growing monthly cheque?
“That is not fiscal federalism. It is fiscal sedation and rascality.
“There is no economic morality in making a market woman poorer so that a governor can receive a bigger allocation. There is no developmental wisdom in emptying household pockets merely to fatten government accounts while Nigerians still confront bad roads, inadequate hospitals, failing schools and unemployment.
“Tinubu did not solve the structural weakness of the states. He simply threw more money at it and sent the bill to Nigerians.
“And since the Presidency has suddenly discovered the speed to respond to Atiku, let it show similar enthusiasm in explaining the approximately ₦30 trillion in Federation Account revenues, deductions, savings and transfers that Atiku has demanded be reconciled, as well as the ₦12.8 trillion Service-Wide Vote in the 2026 budget.
“You cannot scream ‘hoax’ at a proposal designed to ease hardship and suddenly become deaf and dumb when confronted with questions of fiscal opacity, alleged budget padding and questionable expenditure.
“If Tinubu can mobilise an army of propagandists to attack Atiku within hours, surely he can find one accountant to explain his books.
“Tinubu removed subsidy supposedly to save money, floated the naira and piled taxes and levies on Nigerians. Federation revenues ballooned, yet citizens became poorer.
“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.
“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.
“Nigerians have paid enough for Tinubunomics. They should not be sentenced to another four years of the bitter experiment.”
