By Sunday Dare
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s current press convention in Abuja—the place he attacked NNPC Retail’s 30-day low cost on petrol value and a modulation framework—is a seminal instance of shallow, election-laced demagoguery.
Atiku “Kachalla”, completely unplugged from world realities and consumed by an unbridled lust for energy, is a Lone Ranger.
In the United Kingdom, as a result of the worldwide oil market impacts native pump costs, Prime Minister Andy Burnham supplied Britons a Google Maps hyperlink to seek out one of the best fuel costs. Google Maps’ Fuel Prices characteristic helps drivers examine near-real-time petrol and diesel costs at native forecourts.
In America, President Trump signed an govt order titled “Emergency Tax Relief on Diesel Fuel” on October 5, 2026 and introduced a diesel provide take care of Russia, not minding if it derails his avowed dedication to finish the Russia-Ukraine battle.
In near 10 different international locations, leaders are using numerous means to offer aid for residents. But in Nigeria, a President affords the identical, and a misguided presidential candidate chooses to bounce on the sufferings of Nigerians and exploit it for political good points.
For a long time, political opportunism in Nigeria has relied on a single, poisonous components: exploit momentary transitional discomfort, enchantment to emotional cynicism, and promise mathematically unimaginable fast fixes to a classy voters.
Calling a calibrated, multi-layered financial stabilisation technique a “panic-driven gimmick” reveals greater than partisan bitterness; it exposes a profound, structural ignorance of worldwide power dynamics, fiscal mechanics, and the plain arithmetic of recent Nigeria.
Atiku’s soundbite-driven critique depends on emotional bait, attempting to purchase future votes with low-cost sentimental appeals whereas ignoring the structural rot that President Tinubu’s administration has systematically dismantled during the last three years.
Atiku’s try and place himself because the “smart student” instructing financial coverage falls aside beneath even mild scrutiny.
First, it’s sheer absurdity {that a} man who graduated from a college of hygiene dares to name a first-class accounting graduate a boring scholar.
Second, Atiku’s proposal for a blanket “production subsidy” just isn’t an alternate financial mannequin—it’s a harmful mathematical fantasy wrapped in political deceit.
Unhinged, Atiku Abubakar arrogantly claims that President Tinubu copied his financial homework whereas stripping away the core ingredient that makes it work: the “production subsidy.”
But allow us to study the precise numbers that Atiku intentionally conceals from the Nigerian public.
As Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance Taiwo Oyedele clearly articulated on Channels TV, Nigeria at the moment produces about 1.8 million barrels of crude oil per day (bpd) for a inhabitants of over 200 million individuals. Simplistic populists like Atiku intentionally deceive residents by pretending that the Federal Government immediately owns all 1.8 million barrels and might distribute or low cost them at will.
Under advanced Joint Ventures (JVs) and Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) signed over a long time, manufacturing prices, royalties, and profit-oil sharing ratios severely scale back the fairness crude out there to the state. After accounting for these statutory and contractual obligations, Nigeria has fewer than 700,000 barrels per day of unencumbered “free crude” to provide away.
Mega-refineries just like the Dangote Petroleum Refinery require immense every day feedstock that far exceeds what the state can freely present with out breaching present worldwide provide contracts or bankrupting nationwide revenues.
Consequently, Dangote and different home refiners should complement native provides by importing crude from worldwide markets.
To suggest a blanket “targeted production subsidy” on crude with out the bodily, unencumbered quantity to again it up is pure financial illiteracy. It invitations the very opacity, fraudulent round-tripping, and monetary haemorrhage that crippled Nigeria for many years beneath the outdated subsidy regime.
Compare Nigeria’s numbers with these of different world oil producers. The United States produces over 10 million barrels per day for 330 million individuals, but sells petroleum strictly at market-determined costs. Qatar holds among the world’s largest fuel reserves for beneath 500,000 residents, but needed to lower power subsidies considerably to keep up long-term fiscal well being.
As Minister Oyedele famous, evaluating native crude allocation to native agricultural produce like garri or cassava—a deceptive analogy popularised by media commentary—is a elementary misrepresentation of worldwide commodity markets and contractual power economics. For Atiku to counsel that Nigeria can fund limitless manufacturing subsidies with out bankrupting the state is both financially reckless or basically dishonest.
*Price Modulation vs Subsidy Restoration: Unpacking the 30-Day Strategy*
Atiku’s try to border NNPC Retail’s resolution to forgo its revenue margin as a “return to the fuel subsidy” is a deliberate mischaracterisation designed to mislead the general public and incite public dissatisfaction. First, NNPC had supplied the low cost to rejoice the 66th Independence anniversary. It merely supplied to increase the low cost by one other 30 days.
The administration’s intervention is a market-smoothing value modulation framework, not a return to unbudgeted federal spending. When NNPC Retail agrees to promote gasoline at touchdown value for 30 days throughout an unprecedented world crude value spike, it isn’t writing checks to opaque import cartels. It is leveraging its company steadiness sheet to soak up short-term world volatility, backed immediately by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Furthermore, the Federal Government’s negotiation of an interim N1,350 per litre ceiling on ex-gantry prices is a structural shock absorber, not value management. Under this framework, refiners and importers take in short-term value spikes above the ceiling and recuperate these prices later when world crude costs cool or native alternate charges alter. N1,400 at this time and N1,400 tomorrow supplies far higher financial stability than N1,500 at this time and N1,300 tomorrow.
Rapid, erratic value swings set off instant, panic-driven hikes in business transport fares that hardly ever lower even when gasoline costs drop. The ceiling protects commuters from everlasting hikes in transport costs. The ceiling is reviewed transparently each month primarily based on printed value audits, stopping the hidden accumulation of opaque state liabilities.
*Structural Solutions: The Administration’s Multi-Pronged Economic Approach*
While critics provide low-cost soundbites, the Tinubu administration has deployed concrete, structural insurance policies throughout your complete power and financial worth chain by establishing a state-backed strategic power reserve to launch refined merchandise each time world provide disruptions or non-public hoarding threaten value stability—securing long-term provide with out fixing market costs.
President Tinubu’s administration is quickly increasing Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) infrastructure in partnership with state governments. At 60-70% cheaper than premium motor spirit (PMS), CNG affords a everlasting structural various for business transporters.
The authorities has secured home refining operations by way of naira-for-crude preparations to insulate pump costs from overseas alternate volatility. It has launched windfall taxes on power operators that try and gouge shoppers throughout crises, explicitly earmarking the income for transport vouchers and minimum-wage help.
President Tinubu’s authorities is already imposing the 2025 tax reform legal guidelines to dismantle unlawful highway levies and utilizing NIPOST digital handle codes to cut back freight and meals distribution prices drastically.
*The Record Speaks: Concrete Dividends of the Tinubu Reforms Since 2023*
Atiku’s narrative asks Nigerians to overlook the unsustainable fiscal precipice the nation confronted earlier than May 2023. The brave removing of the poisonous gasoline subsidy and the unification of the distorted overseas alternate market weren’t selections of comfort; they had been surgical interventions required to avoid wasting the Nigerian economic system from complete collapse.
Despite world headwinds, these foundational reforms have delivered dividends throughout a number of sectors. The multi-trillion-naira drain that starved state governments of capital for schooling, healthcare, and infrastructure has completely stopped.
Nigeria’s wealth now goes on to the 36 states and native governments. They now obtain document federal allocations by way of FAAC, in contrast to previously, when corrupt fuel-smuggling syndicates benefited.
Second, the federal government eradicated multi-day gasoline queues. For a long time, Nigerians spent days sleeping at filling stations on account of synthetic shortage, hoarding, and unpaid subsidy claims. Today, regardless of world power shocks, gasoline queues have been eradicated nationwide as a result of market forces drive provide.
The harmful hole between the official and parallel alternate charges—which let well-connected political elites acquire official {dollars} cheaply and promote them on the black marketplace for on the spot billions—has been eradicated. The administration has curtailed forex round-tripping, restoring worldwide confidence in Nigeria’s monetary programs.
Third, direct social security nets and wage help. Rather than subsidising the gasoline tanks of rich SUV house owners, the administration redirected funds into direct money transfers for tens of millions of weak households, subsidised credit score funds for micro and small enterprises, and enhanced wage awards for civil servants.
Fourth is infrastructure growth and power independence. By operationalising native refining by way of naira-crude agreements and launching huge nationwide infrastructure tasks—such because the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway, and nationwide rail networks—Nigeria is constructing the bodily spine required for single-digit inflation and sustained industrial development.
*Sophistication Over Demagoguery*
Atiku Abubakar’s try and equate advanced financial governance with an examination paper copied by a “dull student” insults the Nigerian voters. Nigerians perceive that power financial illnesses constructed over thirty years can’t be cured by populist slogans or 30-day electioneering guarantees.
The various Atiku affords—resurrecting opaque subsidy regimes beneath the guise of “production subsidies” with out the crude volumes to again them—is the precise highway to wreck that nearly introduced Nigeria to its knees earlier than May 2023. It represents the outdated manner of doing enterprise: short-term palliative bribes funded by unsustainable nationwide debt, main on to shortage, forex collapse, and monetary chapter.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration has chosen the arduous, brave, and needed path. By coupling market deregulation with focused price-smoothing mechanisms, strategic reserves, fast CNG rollout, and disciplined fiscal administration, the administration is laying a everlasting basis for sustainable prosperity.
The Nigerian voters is way too subtle to commerce long-term nationwide financial safety for Atiku’s shallow, short-term demagoguery.
Dr Sunday Dare
Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communications
October 11, 2026
