- Insists anyone promising subsidy u-turn is selling lies
BY VICTOR BUORO – Firmly digging its heels in on its economic agenda, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has flatly rejecting mounting demands to bring back petrol subsidies and sounding a sharp warning against politicians dangling “misleading” promises of a reversal ahead of the 2027 elections.
Leading the charge against politicians promising to reverse one of the major economic reforms by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration is Director General of the APC 2027 Presidential Campaign Council, Senator Abdulaziz Yari, who insisted that any candidate campaigning on subsidy regime restoration is selling an illusion.
Senator Yari, who spoke when members of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) visited him, maintained that backtracking on one of the President’s most defining and contentious economic reforms would only jeopardize the nation’s financial future.
Insisting that a promise to restore the subsidy regime is misleading the Nigerian public, the former Zamfara State governor said the subsidy system had become too costly and lacked transparency, arguing that bringing it back represents an invitation to national disaster.
Yari’s comments came against the backdrop of a promise by former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar to introduce a targeted subsidy system if elected president in 2027.
According to Atiku, Nigerians were yet to see clear evidence of how funds saved from subsidy removal were being utilised and his administration when elected would adopt a different approach to cushion the impact of petrol price increases in the country.
However, Director General of the APC 2027 Presidential Campaign Council said letting the subsidy go was quite a tough decision that the country needed at that time, noting that: “Before Asiwaju came in in 2023, there was no budget for subsidy. National Assembly passed the budget in March, but there was no provision for subsidy in 2023 budget.”
Further questioning how any incoming government could sustain such a policy without a clear financial framework, he said: “Anybody who is deceiving Nigerians, saying I’m going to bring this thing back, he’s lying to himself, he is lying internally, he’s lying eternally, he’s lying to Nigerians.”
He raised concerns over the figures previously associated with petrol subsidy payments, stressing that the country not only lacked accurate data on fuel consumption, but also the subsidy regime involved huge financial commitments without sufficient clarity on the actual volume of petrol consumed daily.
“This is about N20 trillion deal for a year, going to where we don’t know. Nobody can tell you exactly how much litres we need, what are the quantities per day,” he said, adding that repeated demands by the governors to have an accurate consumption figures from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) never produced the need results.
The APC campaign chief, who led the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) at that time, said: “As chairman Governors Forum, we challenged NNPC for four years to tell us the exact consumption”, lamenting that explanations given over subsidy payments remained unclear, including claims that Nigeria was subsidising fuel consumption beyond its borders.
“When at the end of the day, we push harder, they said no, ‘we are doing subsidy for West Africa,’” the former governor said, even as he stressed that the APC campaign would focus on defending the administration’s record and presenting evidence of its achievements rather than engaging in personal attacks against opponents.
“We are on the right path. By God’s grace, we have the data. This is what we are going to do in our campaign – facts and figures,” he said, adding: “What we have done, what we achieved, and what we intend to do in the future. We don’t call any names. Names are not important to us, but rather what we’re going to do for Nigerians and what we’ve been doing for the past three and a half years.”
While expressing confidence that President Tinubu remained the best candidate to lead Nigeria beyond 2027, Senator Yari said the president’s policies would receive renewed support from voters, adding, “Bola Ahmed Tinubu is doing his best, and we believe he’s the right man for this job again.”
With the 2027 general elections now in view, these latest exchanges are widening the political scrutiny over the APC-led administration’s economic reforms as prominent opposition figures, including Atiku, and Peter Obi have repeatedly criticised the impact of subsidy removal on Nigerians.
There have been strong arguments by the opposition that the subsidy removal had increased hardship on ordinary Nigerians while public officials continue to fund their extravagant spending. Consequently, they have demanded transparency and better accountability for savings from the reform which the Tinubu administration claimed has accrued to the country while stopping waste and redirecting resources to development programmes.
