Has Atiku put Tinubu on the defensive over petrol subsidies?

Muhammadu Sanusi offered Nigerian voters a warning before the 2023 election: anyone promising an easy road either was lying or did not understand the job. Yet former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s promise to restore petrol subsidies in 2027 has quickly become a powerful political message.

Atiku’s pledge has put President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress on the defensive. The party had resisted concessions on petrol costs and had not pursued domestic price reviews despite higher crude prices associated with the Persian Gulf crises. Atiku’s intervention has now forced the issue back into the campaign conversation.

The appeal is straightforward in a country facing hardship. Whether Atiku speaks or uses sign language, the article argues, his message reaches voters desperate for relief. It describes the pledge as political opportunism, while also saying Atiku cannot be blamed for the fact that many Nigerians now see subsidy as the only benefit they have received from the political elite.

The subsidy system itself has long been associated with corruption, but that concern has receded for many people because the Tinubu administration removed the subsidy and transferred the money to governors, whom the article also describes as unaccountable. The result, in the article’s telling, is that Nigerians on both sides of the policy debate feel they have lost.

State and local-government allocations have risen sharply. Federal Ministry of Finance figures show that, on a comparable monthly basis through December 2025, allocations to states increased 94%, while local-government allocations rose 85%.

Ekiti State illustrates the disparity described in the article. The state receives the smallest monthly share among Nigeria’s 36 states. Its average monthly allocation from January to April 2023, before subsidy removal, stood at about ₦1.73 billion. By May 2026, reports on Federation Account Allocation Committee disbursements put its allocation at ₦13.13 billion, still the lowest among the states. The figures have not stopped subsidy politics from becoming a central test for Tinubu and Atiku ahead of 2027.

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Anybody who tells you that it is going to be easy, please, don’t vote for him. It’s either that he’s lying to you, or he does not know what job he’s going to get.