A heated exchange has erupted between former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and the Presidency following Atiku’s criticism of President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms, particularly the abrupt removal of fuel subsidies, according to The Guardian. He argued that his administration would have been more empathetic and better prepared to handle the fallout of such reforms.
“I am not the president, Tinubu is. The focus should be on him and not on me or any other. I believe that such inquiries distract from the critical questions of what President Bola Tinubu needs to do to save Nigerians from the excruciating pains arising from his trial-and-error economic policies,” he wrote on X.
Responding later in the evening, the Presidency, through presidential spokesperson Bayo Onanuga, said Atiku “tried to discredit President Tinubu’s economic reform programmes” while pushing his untested agenda as a better alternative. The Presidency added that Nigerians rejected Atiku’s ideas in the 2023 election, claiming his proposals lacked substance.
“First, Alhaji Atiku’s ideas, which lacked details, were rejected by Nigerians in the 2023 poll,” Onanuga said.
The Presidency also claimed that if Atiku had been elected, his administration would have been riddled with corruption, citing Atiku’s alleged plans to sell key national assets to close associates.
“If he had won the election, we believe he would have plunged Nigeria into a worse situation or run a regime of cronyism,” he wrote.
“Abubakar lost the election partly because he vowed to sell the NNPC and other assets to his friends.”
The Presidency’s statement also took aim at Atiku’s tenure as vice president from 1999 to 2003 under President Olusegun Obasanjo, accusing him of overseeing a “questionable privatisation programme.”
“He (Atiku) and his boss (Obasanjo) demonstrated a lack of faith in our educational system and both went to establish their universities while they allowed ours to flounder,” he added.
“Talk is cheap. It is easy to pontificate and deride a rival’s programmes even when there are irrefutable indices that the economic reforms yield positives despite the temporary difficulties,” Onanuga said.
