Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has declared that no amount of resistance from President Bola Tinubu or “millions of his gang of economic jesters” can stop him from restoring a targeted fuel subsidy to Nigerians, accusing the administration of dressing up subsidy removal as reform while quietly extending fiscal concessions to oil investors.

In a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress ADC, said the President’s claim to have abolished subsidy could not be reconciled with tax credits and other incentives still available to petroleum operators.

The former Vice President anchored his case in the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited’s NNPC own audited accounts, arguing that the figures contradicted the government’s insistence that subsidy had ended.

“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,” the statement read.

Atiku said the naming of the expense as a “shortfall” rather than subsidy did not change its substance, insisting that Nigerians were not interested in the terminology used to describe public money spent bridging the same price gap.

“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,” he said.

He also cited the Deep Offshore Oil and Gas Projects Incentives framework, under which qualifying petroleum developments can access production tax credits beginning at $3 and $4.50 per barrel, as evidence that the government readily intervened in the market when investors stood to benefit.

Contrasting that posture with the government’s stance on household relief, Atiku accused the administration of applying one economic standard to corporations and another to citizens.

“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,” he said.

He described his own proposal, the Atiku Economic Recovery Plan, as distinct from the “opaque and corruption-ridden” subsidy regime of the past, saying it would come with clear limits and oversight.

“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,” the statement said.

Atiku further demanded that the government disclose details of petroleum tax concessions already granted, including who benefited and what value of revenue was forgone.

“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.” (Vanguard)

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