File: Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, Atiku Abubakar.
On the day President Bola Tinubu was inaugurated in May 2023, I was fortunate to join the Arise News marathon coverage in a segment that followed the inaugural address. I described the policy announcements that followed as important quick fixes for an economy that was already flat on its knees.
President Tinubu was inheriting a fragile economy with mounting debts, low revenue, and multiple subsidies that created a big hole in our public finances. States were struggling to pay salaries, and fuel subsidies were taking up all our earnings. It got so bad that we began pledging away the oil we had yet to produce to creditors just to get a quick reprieve.
That the fuel subsidy, which constituted a major drag on our finances, must go was the refrain of almost all the presidential candidates in 2023, including former vice president Atiku Abubakar. More than three years after President Tinubu’s decisive move, I had quietly hoped that fuel subsidy removal would no longer be a tool for political opportunism. And that if there was any debate at all, it would be on how to better manage the attendant fallout, and on that basis we might diverge.
