Atiku, MDGs and the Fuel Subsidy Debate | By Olugbade Omotajo
On August 20, 2026, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Nigeria’s former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), unveiled his core economic agenda for the country.
Under the Atiku Economic Recovery Program, the multi-time presidential contestant shocked many Nigerians by promising to return the controversial fuel subsidy if elected president in 2027. That’s not all. Alhaji Abubakar will also make an all-comers affair of the country’s borders by throwing them open to promote “cross-border trades and strengthen regional commerce”.
Soon after, Nigerians in their numbers, across party, tribal and socioeconomic lines began to comment on the new direction offered by Atiku to champion the vision of a great and prosperous Nigeria. Several thought-provoking questions were asked bordering on the sudden change of mind having been a strong advocate of fuel subsidy removal way back in 2022. Not only that, how does the former Wazirin Adamawa truly hope to bring back subsidy without undermining the fiscal gains of the past couple of years under the Tinubu government? In addition, how will candidate Atiku stave off the complete collapse of the 27 FAAC-dependent states in the country many of which are in his own region?
In his reaction to these widespread reservations, Atiku spoke confidently about his policy pillar insisting on implementing a harmless subsidy variant called ‘production subsidy’. As has been variously explained in the media, Atiku’s subsidy will come in the form of prescribed discounts on crude oil sold to eligible refineries. The general idea is to reduce the cost of production and make petrol, the most influential end product of crude oil refining, cheaper and affordable to local consumers. With cheaper fuel, Atiku reasoned that transportation costs, food prices, and inflation will drop drastically thus enabling the masses to live a better and more comfortable life.
No doubt, seen on paper and, most importantly, in light of its anticipated macroeconomic impact on the country’s hurting masses, Atiku’s idea sounds so good, cool and attractive to any right-thinking Nigerian. Sadly, however, the first sign that all is neither good nor attractive with the policy came from the camp of Atiku himself. At different times, two of his media aides went for each other’s jugular in an attempt to explain the policy better and convince Nigerians it would work. Paul Ibe, one of his publicists, was the first to tell Nigerians what his principal had in mind. During an interview on AIT, Ibe disclosed that the subsidy was designed as a temporary measure that would go once things improve.
Interestingly, Phrank Shaibu, the Senior Special Assistant to Atiku on Public Communication, would have none of that and promptly denounced his colleague, stating that the subsidy has no fixed timeline and would remain in place until production expands significantly, market competition deepens and supply stabilizes. Dissatisfied with the conflicting positions of his spokespersons, Atiku later came out himself to make things worse by saying that his administration will introduce ‘targeted subsidy’ that will stay for as long as it takes to put enough money in the pockets of Nigerians. Whatever ‘enough money’ means, only Atiku can honestly tell us. Tell us in very clear language the point of financial saturation that will dictate the time and pace of his subsidy removal.
With this, one finds it laughable that far from the trial field, the policy was already drawing significant confusion from the home-front thereby sending clear signals to Nigerians on the danger ahead for its successful implementation. That three people-a principal and two of his spin doctors-would demonstrate this terrible disorder of understanding of their own agenda is certainly enough to unsettle Nigerians on the other side of the spectrum.
But then, we must bear with Atiku and tolerate his limited capacity for good economic judgment. On the one hand, how do we marry subsidy and market competition in a discriminatory subsidy regime that has inclusion and exclusion criteria and, on the other, how can a president tie the lifespan of an intervention policy to the financial equilibrium of Nigerian masses with different levels of deprivation? No doubt, these are evident contradictions and conundrums that Atiku and his men will need to put in proper perspective for us if the new policy is to make any sense at all.
From what we are seeing again, it seems the ADC presidential candidate is already betraying his habitual appetite for postulating potentially wreck-bound economic policies. Somehow, he appears comfortable with formulating policies from the back room of contemporary reality. To those who have been following his growth curve in the context of national politics especially regarding his desperate ambition to rule Nigeria, this is not the first time the customs officer-turned-politician will be looking into the rear mirror in his rather strange attempt to drive Nigeria forward. In 2022, while preparing for the 2023 presidential election, Atiku assembled a supposedly ‘crack team’ of policy draftsmen and took them to Dubai to prepare a top-notch blueprint for his campaign. Unfortunately, many Nigerians were disappointed by the recessionary package that followed the team back all the way from Dubai. Instead of offering new thoughts on the way forward for the country, Atiku and his policy ‘troubadours’ chose to frame their economic development agenda around the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In other words, his Dubai policy retreat was so smartly designed to feed on and adapt the MDGs as a critical pathway to Nigeria’s economic renaissance. Of course, it sounded absolutely incredible to most Nigerians especially those in the development space but when Atiku appeared on the television looking exuberant and accomplished, and truly chest-thumping the MDGs as the foundation of his policy workbook, many knew he had brought back from Dubai the popular ‘one-chance bus’ with which he hoped to drive Nigeria to a complete economic dead end. That a Nigerian presidential candidate in 2023 would weave his socioeconomic agenda around a global policy framework that ended in 2015-eight good years before his ambition-spoke of no other thing but epic ignorance.
Looking back now, I have no problem accommodating his current misjudgments for all he has said and all he has to offer. They merely speak to his person and brand. Nonetheless, beyond the broadsides, could Atiku, this time around, be making sense or turning the issue on its head once again? Personally, I do not know enough about the economics of fuel production and distribution to provide a safe answer but I know what it means when immediate and principal beneficiaries of a proposed policy are putting their thumbs down for it. Apart from the possible return of fiscal pressure and investor-exit threats, local refinery operators are far from applauding the market intervention. Temidayo Ogunbanwo, General Manager of Aradel Refinery-one of the potential local refineries to receive Atiku’s ‘targeted subsidy’ has this to say: “the removal of fuel subsidy and the liberalization of the market had created a clearer pathway for the company to manufacture petrol”. Next to him, Aliko Dangote, Africa’s industrial Czar, speaking at the initial public offering of his refinery in September warned against the evil of fuel subsidy highlighting the potential for escalated cross border smuggling, inflated local consumption figures and accelerated drive to crippling product scarcity that this country once witnessed.
As conversation intensifies on the future of democratic Nigeria, Atiku must genuinely ask himself if he has a superior agenda to what the present government is running to create an economically buoyant country. Right now, the populist policy of fuel subsidy appears to have fallen flat, and so does the borderless economic program. The question then is: what next? Sincerely, there appears to be nothing ‘next’ as the nation’s political class, outside the constituency of Tinubu, has morphed into a reactive ecosystem just to undo what the current Tinubu administration has put in place. Everywhere, the major campaign point among opposition politicians is either to bring back fuel subsidy or scrap exchange rate unification and in some cases, bemoan energy and security crisis of which many of them were, at one time or another, liquidators-in-chief during their public service stewardship.
While aspiring to become the president of one’s country is not harmful in itself, it becomes a different ball game altogether when that aspiration runs on the track of empty economic logic. In this way, it risks compromising modest progress and accentuating citizens’ grief. Salvador Salis says “ambition without intelligence is like a wingless bird”. So, at 79 years of age, the best days are obviously behind Atiku while his bird, over the years, has become manifestly wingless. Therefore, at this point in his life, all that honor requires from him is to simply queue behind any of the other candidates who understand the language and dynamics of modern development governance and then transition to peaceful retirement.
Quite sadly, however, this is unlikely to happen given the many predatory entities rooting for him and etching a daily living from his long-held presidential delusion. “Atiku is for the People” global movement, “Atiku Support Organizations”, “U and I for Atiku” and many others are part of the ‘Hail Mary’ crowd making it difficult for him to face the urgent need for retirement and dignified transformation to respectable statesmanship.
I close with this statement from Olabode Opeseitan “Statesmen build. Pretenders destroy. Between being a statesman and a pretender; between being a builder and a destroyer, Atiku has a choice and the time is now.
By: Olugbade Omotajo (omonisomething@gmail.com)
