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Targeted Subsidy: 100 million Tinubus can’t stop me, Atiku
🇳🇬 Nigeria /Economy & Trade

Targeted Subsidy: 100 million Tinubus can’t stop me, Atiku

From Vanguard · () English

Translated from English, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

News Named sources Context piece
  • Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar accused President Bola Tinubu's administration of maintaining a "targeted fuel subsidy" despite claims of its abolition.
  • Abubakar cited NNPC's audited accounts, showing significant "energy-security expenses" in 2023 and 2024, which he argues represent a continued subsidy under a different name.
  • He criticized the government for providing tax credits and incentives to oil investors while claiming to remove subsidies, contrasting this with the hardship faced by ordinary Nigerians.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has directly challenged President Bola Tinubu's administration, asserting that a "targeted fuel subsidy" remains in place for Nigerians, despite official claims of its abolition. Abubakar contends that the government is masking the subsidy removal as reform while simultaneously extending fiscal concessions to oil investors.

In plain English, government was still absorbing a price differential after Tinubu had triumphantly announced that subsidy was gone.

— Atiku AbubakarExplaining his interpretation of NNPC's financial statements regarding fuel costs.

Abubakar based his argument on the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited's (NNPC) audited accounts. He pointed to approximately ₦4.84 trillion recorded as "energy-security expenses and related shortfalls" in 2023, and about ₦7.13 trillion under the same category in 2024. According to Abubakar, the NNPC itself explained these expenses partly stem from the difference between the regulated ex-coastal price and the actual exchange rate used for import settlement. "In plain English, government was still absorbing a price differential after Tinubu had triumphantly announced that subsidy was gone," his statement read.

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.

— Atiku AbubakarCriticizing the government's terminology for fuel cost interventions.

He further argued that renaming the expense as a "shortfall" does not alter its fundamental nature as a subsidy, as public resources are still being used to bridge the price gap between economic cost and the pump price of petrol. Abubakar also highlighted the Deep Offshore Oil and Gas Projects Incentives framework, which offers production tax credits to petroleum developments, as evidence of the government's willingness to intervene in the market for corporate benefit. He contrasted this with the administration's stance on household relief, accusing it of applying different economic standards to corporations and citizens.

You cannot abolish subsidy at the podium and resurrect it in the accounts under an alias.

— Atiku AbubakarAccusing the administration of deceptive accounting practices regarding fuel subsidies.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Vanguard in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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