By Ehichioya Ezomon
“A subsidy remains a subsidy. You may call it production subsidy, targeted subsidy, capped subsidy or give it any sophisticated economic description you like. Once the government is required to absorb part of the cost of petrol so that it can be sold below what the market would otherwise determine, public resources are being committed to make up the difference.
“The critical questions therefore remain unanswered: What is the subsidy rate? What quantity of petrol will qualify? What is the annual expenditure ceiling? Where will the money come from? And what mechanism will guarantee that whatever benefit government gives to refiners will actually reach ordinary Nigerians at the filling stations?”
The Chairman of the Planning Committee of the 2027 APC Presidential and Governorship Campaign Committee (PGCC) in Ogun State, Kayode Oladele, posed these questions while describing, as “an attempt to repackage an old policy under a new name,” the fuel subsidy proposal by former Vice President and candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the 2027 General Election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
During campaigns for the 2023 election, Atiku had pledged to remove subsidy on petrol (premium motor spirit) he described as “unsustainable, opaque, and susceptible to corruption,” though he said the process would be implemented responsibly and paired with structural safety nets for the citizens.
In an interview with Arise News in July 2022, Atiku said he would “eliminate fuel subsidy through negotiations” if elected president in 2023. “It is inevitable that it will happen. I believe through negotiations again with the organised labour and other sectors of the economy, the subsidy removal should be resumed and completed,” Atiku said – referring to the aborted plan by the President Goodluck Jonathan government (2010-2015) to effect the policy due partly to pressures from then-opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) that defeated the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the 2015 election.
In December 2022,
Atiku again said he would “address the issue of fuel subsidy in his first 100 days in office as Nigeria’s president,” a Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) War Room “fact check” stated, tracing the claim that Atiku had campaigned to “remove petrol subsidy on day one if elected president” to former Edo State Governor, Sen. Adams Oshiomhole (APC, Edo North) during the 2023 election.
During a 2023 interview on Channels TV, Oshiomhole said that Atiku, then-presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP) and candidate of Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) in 2027, Mr Peter Obi, and Tinubu promised to remove fuel subsidy on their first day in office as Nigeria’s president.
Oshiomhole, ex-national chairman of the ruling APC recalled that, “If there is one issue which all the leading (2023) presidential candidates had an agreement on, it is that they all agreed that subsidy will go. I remember the then-candidate, Peter Obi, saying he will remove it on the very first day. Candidate Atiku said the same thing, and candidate Bola Tinubu said the same thing.”
Like Tinubu, Obi campaigned to scrap fuel subsidy on his first day as president. The CDD, reviewing his campaign statements for the 2023 poll, found that “he made repeated declarations regarding his plan to remove the fuel subsidy.”
In July 2022, Obi, in an interview with Arise News, said he would remove fuel subsidy and “look for something to replace it, as it is not beneficial to Nigeria’s economy.” Also, at a presidential town hall organised by Channels Television on January 8, 2023, Obi promised to “immediately” remove fuel subsidy if elected president.
Describing subsidy as an “organised crime,” Obi said he would “not allow it to stay a day longer when he gets elected into office,” as reported by Premium Times and Channels TV, and posted about the event on his verified X/Twitter handle, reiterating he would “immediately remove the subsidy when elected.”
“The claim that Peter Obi promised to eliminate fuel subsidy on his first day in office as Nigeria’s president is true,” CDD War Room said, adding, “We can confirm that he explicitly stated his intention to remove it immediately, without allowing it to stay a day longer.”
Since removal of fuel subsidy, and dealing with its harsh economic fallout, President Tinubu’s come under Atiku’s criticisms for the alleged anti-people action,” saying, if he were president, he would’ve taken a different approach by ensuring cushioning measures were put in place before phasing out the policy.
From inconsistency, and contradicting or countering his media aides on subsidy he’s resurrected as a 2027 campaign tool to puncture Tinubu and the APC momentum ahead of the general election; Atiku’s found his bearing, with his messaging centred on “transforming from an import consumption relief into a domestic production subsidy.”
Arguing that President Tinubu’s sudden subsidy removal “has plunged millions into extreme hardship,” while the resulting government savings “have been largely mismanaged or unaccounted for,” Atiku clarifies that he doesn’t intend to restore the previous consumption-driven model, which relied heavily on importing refined fuel, but his policy “will subsidise crude oil processed within Nigeria to lower domestic retail prices.”
He promises that “only petrol refined domestically, including products from modular refineries, will qualify” for his proposed intervention, while imported petrol will be excluded, and “the costs and payments will be published and independently audited,” to ensure transparency and accountability in the system.
“I’m restoring subsidy to cut fuel, transport costs… (the proposed policy) would amount to a ‘production subsidy’ rather than an import subsidy. (The government will) support crude oil refined in Nigeria to enable domestic refineries to produce petrol at lower costs and pass the savings to consumers,” Atiku said. (Google)
Atiku compares this strategy to shoemaking, stating the government “can either spend public funds to make imported shoes cheaper or support local shoemakers in Aba (the industrial and commercial hub of Abia State) to reduce production costs.” He says “I choose the Aba shoemaker” because “a nation as blessed as ours has no business abandoning its citizens to hardship.”
As international events, such as the United States war on Iran war, forces prices of petrol to fluctuate, and Nigerians are yoked to “market forces,” Atiku sees an opening to pillory Tinubu government’s “failure to extend the so-called gains of subsidy removal” to ordinary Nigerians.
Atiku queries the lack of visible, public benefits from the trillions of Naira saved from subsidy removal in mid-2023, insisting, “I did not oppose the removal of the oil subsidy, but where is the money? Where did it go? It was intended to reduce poverty and help children attend school. It seems they are just stealing it. If elected, I will bring back the oil subsidy, and whoever stole the money must refund it.”
Atiku’s handlers talk about the return of petrol subsidy as “a short-term economic intervention, to serve as a buffer while the economy stabilises,” with one of his spokespersons, Chief Paul Ibe, quoted as saying, “We are not returning to Egypt… (the proposal is) a short-term economic intervention, giving households and businesses time to adjust to prevailing economic conditions before the subsidy is eventually withdrawn.”
Similarly, an ADC stalwart and former Kogi West senator, Dino Melaye, appearing on AIT, said implementing Atiku’s “targeted production subsidy” could effectively “slash the pump price of petrol down to between ₦400 and ₦500 per litre, offering immediate relief from the current N950+ market rates” – an obviously unrealistic projection meant to woo hard-hit citizens for 2027.
Meanwhile, Oladele, the chair of the Ogun State APC-PGCC, tries to distinguish between Tinubu’s “subsidy is gone” and Atiku’s “subsidy is back,” and how one has affected Nigeria’s overall economic and social outlooks, and the other will shape out if Atiku is president.
His words: “The fundamental difference between President Bola Tinubu’s approach and Atiku’s proposal is that the president is attempting to restructure the energy and transportation economy rather than return government to permanently underwriting fuel consumption. What Nigerians should therefore ask Atiku is simple: after all our experience with subsidy, is the solution really to create another subsidy programme?”
“President Tinubu took the difficult decision to confront a subsidy system that had become enormously burdensome to the public treasury. Such structural reforms inevitably come with adjustment pressures and nobody should pretend otherwise. What Nigerians should therefore ask Atiku is simple: after all our experience with subsidy, is the solution really to create another subsidy programme?”
Faulting criticism of the Tinubu government’s transportation initiatives, Oladele said Atiku ignored the administration’s attempt to diversify Nigeria’s transportation energy base through Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and other alternatives to petrol, PUNCH reported on October 4, 2026.
“Atiku wants Nigerians to believe that the only meaningful way of reducing transportation costs is to return the government to subsidising fuel,” Oladele said. “President Tinubu is pursuing a different structural approach: broaden the country’s transportation energy options, expand CNG infrastructure and progressively reduce the dependence of commercial transportation on petrol.
“That is an important distinction. One approach asks the government to continue absorbing part of the price of a commodity. The other seeks to change the underlying cost structure by creating alternatives,” he added, even as he noted that Atiku’s entitled to propose a different economic programme, “but Nigerians are equally entitled to demand its full arithmetic.
“It is very easy, during an election season, to promise cheaper petrol, cheaper food, cheaper electricity and cheaper transportation. The harder question is how these promises will be financed without recreating the very fiscal problems Nigeria has spent years trying to escape.”
Will Atiku Abubakar look straight into the camera, or into the eyes of Nigerians, and affirm that his pledge to bring down the price of petrol from its current high of about N1,400 per litre to between N400 and N500 per litre isn’t a campaign gimmick to hoodwink voters looking for amelioration of their economic and social hardship under the APC government of President Tinubu, who seeks renewal of his four-year mandate on January 16, 2027?
Atiku (and other presidential candidates) shouldn’t take Nigerian voters for granted. Dangling a N400 per litre bait before them may be attractive, but the assumed “uninformed and gullible” voters are politically-discerning to see through campaign rhetoric that attempts to call or label subsidy a different name!
- Mr Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos. He can be reached on X, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp @EhichioyaEzomon. Tel: 08033078357.
