By Omeiza Ajayi, Abuja
ABUJA: 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.
