Atiku has spoken again. And again, the ground has shifted beneath his feet. Fuel subsidy, which he once called a fraud he would eliminate in 100 days, is, according to Atiku’s latest stance, now something he would only remove “gradually”—depending, of course, on what he finds when he gets to the villa. That is the thing about Atiku: he never quite closes the door. He leaves it ajar, just enough room to slip through when the political winds change.
We have watched this man for decades, and we have come to accept that he is not a prisoner of ideology. He is a weathervane, some would say. Others, less charitable, would say he is simply playing the crowd. But whichever label you prefer, the result is the same: Nigerians are left trying to guess which Atiku will show up on any given day.
The confusion is not helped by his handlers. In one week, we had Paul Ibe giving one interpretation, Phrank Shaibu offering another, and then Atiku himself stepping in to overrule both. When a man’s own kitchen cabinet cannot agree on what he is cooking, you have to wonder what the meal will taste like when it is finally served.
But that was not all. Atiku returned days later on BBC, with yet another explanation—and in the process, managed to leave even his own camp scratching their heads. His new position now is that reinstating fuel subsidy would not be automatic. It would depend, he said, on what he meets on the ground if Nigerians eventually hand him the mandate. In other words, Atiku is now promising to consider keeping it—but only if the conditions are right. Which leaves us asking: what are those conditions, and who decides when they have been met?
Of course, the APC has had a field day with all this. Bayo Onanuga is not one to miss an open goal, and he has taken his shots. And frankly, who can blame him? The contrast between Atiku’s shifting positions and the President Tinubu administration’s courageous reform agenda could not be starker. While Atiku flip-flops to suit whichever audience he is addressing, President Tinubu has shown the kind of leadership Nigeria has been crying out for—taking the tough, unpopular decisions that previous administrations, including the one Atiku served in, lacked the will to make. That, if you ask us, is the difference between a career politician chasing votes and a statesman focused on legacy.
You have to hand it to Atiku, though. The man knows how to keep us guessing. One day, subsidy is a fraud that must be scrapped within his first 100 days in office. That was 2022, when he was courting the business community and talking tough about fiscal discipline. Fast forward to August 2026, and suddenly he is on Facebook pledging to restore subsidy if elected. Within days, his own spokesmen are giving conflicting interpretations—Paul Ibe saying it would be temporary, Phrank Shaibu insisting there would be no timeline. Atiku had to step in and overrule both. Then came the BBC interview, where he told the world that bringing it back would depend on “the situation on ground.” That is a man doing donuts in the middle of the road.
Still, there is something disarming about watching a man of Atiku’s experience fumble this badly on a single issue. This is not a novice learning on the job. This is a former vice president, a serial contender, a man who has spent decades in the corridors of power. When his own spokesmen—Paul Ibe and Phrank Shaibu—cannot agree on what his position is within the same week, the problem is no longer about policy. It is about credibility. And once you lose that, what exactly do you have left?
The Presidency has been quick to pounce, and why wouldn’t they? Bayo Onanuga’s jab about a third U-turn in seven days was predictable, even justified.
Yet for all the drama, the Nigerian people are not amused. They are not sitting in their living rooms tracking who said what in 2022 versus 2026. They are watching the price of everything going up, wondering if the next meal will be harder to afford. Atiku’s shifting position does not offend them because they expect consistency from him. They stopped expecting that from politicians long ago. It offends them because it reminds them that their suffering is being debated like a chess move, with pawns who have no say in the game.
But this piece is not really about Atiku’s reversals, entertaining as they are. It is about something far more consequential: the sheer impossibility of returning to the subsidy regime he now flirts with. Whatever the former Vice President may believe, the economics of this proposal do not add up. And the experts, from policy wonks to former central bank governors, have been saying the same thing for years. Going back to subsidy would not just be a mistake—it would be a catastrophe.
The Independent Media and Policy Initiative recently warned that Atiku’s subsidy proposal would, and we quote, “bankrupt Nigeria, destroy the country’s sovereign credit ratings, and wipe out the economic progress made over the past three years.” That is not political rhetoric. That is a think tank looking at the books and telling us what they see.
Between June 2023 and December 2025, the removal of petrol subsidy and the floating of the exchange rate generated N15.8 trillion in additional resources for the Federation Account. Of this, N10.4 trillion went to state and local governments, while the Federal Government received N5.4 trillion. These are not abstract figures. They represent salaries paid, roads built, and debts serviced. Before these reforms, 27 states could not reliably pay salaries. Without the fiscal space created by subsidy removal, at least 30 states would be struggling to meet salary obligations by 2026. That is what subsidy was doing to us. It was not a welfare programme. It was a fiscal drain that was slowly suffocating every level of government.
The most devastating critique of the old subsidy regime came from someone who should know. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, former Central Bank Governor, described the fuel subsidy not as a social welfare policy but as a “dangerous financial trap” that crippled government finances. His explanation was characteristically blunt. What we called a subsidy, he said, was not really a subsidy. The government told 200 million Nigerians they would not pay more than a fixed amount per litre, no matter what happened to oil prices or exchange rates. When oil went from $40 to $140, the government paid the difference. When the naira depreciated from N155 to N300, the government paid the difference. He called it what it was: the worst form of derivative, an open-ended hedge. And here is the kicker. At some point, we were borrowing money not just to pay subsidies, but to service the interest on the loans taken to pay those subsidies. That was bankruptcy by policy.
Sanusi recalled warning the government as far back as 2012 that delaying subsidy removal would worsen inflationary pressures. If we had removed it then, he said, inflation would have risen slightly from 11 to about 13 per cent and stabilised. Now, we are facing inflation above 30 per cent. That is the cost of delay. That is the legacy Atiku is asking us to revisit.
Beyond the fiscal arithmetic, there is the question of what subsidy restoration would signal to the world. International credit-rating agencies like Fitch and S&P would be concerned not just about the government’s ability to contain subsidy costs, but about the structural implications of a policy reversal. Reintroducing price controls, even under a production model, signals that Nigeria’s long-term investment rules are volatile. The result would be sell-offs in Nigeria’s Eurobonds, increased sovereign borrowing costs, and reduced access to affordable international capital. In plain English: we would become more expensive to borrow from, and less attractive to invest in. At a time when we are begging for foreign direct investment, that is the last message we want to send.
Then there is the Dangote Refinery. This is where Atiku’s proposal gets really complicated. Private mega-facilities like the Dangote Refinery rely on global pricing logic to service their multi-billion-dollar commercial bank loans. Forcing them into complex pricing formulas increases regulatory risk, endangers their cash flows, and threatens a rise in non-performing loans across the banking sector. In other words, a return to subsidy would not just hurt government finances. It would hurt the very domestic refining capacity Atiku claims to want to support. The economist Gbolahan Olojede made a similar point, noting that there would have been no Dangote Refinery takeoff with the subsidy regime. That is a fact worth sitting with.
Atiku’s camp has tried to distinguish his proposal from the old regime. His spokesman, Phrank Shaibu, described it as “a targeted, capped, budgeted, time-bound and independently audited production-support mechanism tied to domestic production.” It sounds sophisticated. But the Presidency has rightly questioned whether the former Vice President understands the mechanics of what he is proposing. Bayo Onanuga asked several practical questions. Would Atiku also subsidise other petroleum products derived from crude oil, such as diesel and kerosene? Would refineries receiving discounted crude be allowed to profit from the remaining products while subsidy support was concentrated on petrol? These are not minor details. They are fundamental to whether the policy works or collapses.
Now, we are not the ones to defend everything this administration has done with the savings from subsidy removal. Atiku is right to ask where the money went. The transparency has been lacking, the investments in public transportation have been slow, and the palliative measures have been inadequate. We have written about all of this before. But acknowledging the failures of implementation is not the same as arguing for a return to a system that was fundamentally broken. And it must be said that President Tinubu has consistently shown a willingness to listen, adjust, and improve and we hope he does as time is no longer on his side.
The economist Gbolahan Olojede made an important distinction. If government must subsidise fuel, he argued, it should move the intervention further up the production chain rather than maintaining subsidy at the pump. He also argued that the priority should be investing in public transportation—a more effective way of extending benefits to ordinary Nigerians who do not own vehicles but spend a significant portion of their income commuting. That is a sensible approach. What is not sensible is pretending we can return to a system that was bleeding us dry, without addressing the structural flaws that made it unsustainable in the first place.
The real tragedy, however, is not about Atiku or Tinubu or any of these men. It is about the people who will wake up tomorrow and queue for fuel that costs more than they earn. They do not care about the nuances of “targeted subsidy” or “phased removal.” They care about getting home, feeding their children, surviving another day. And when they see politicians debating their survival like it is a classroom exercise, they do not feel sorry for themselves—they feel angry. And that anger, if history is any guide, always finds a way to express itself at the ballot box.
Atiku is asking Nigerians to believe that this time, subsidy will be different. That it will be targeted, not open-ended. That it will be transparent, not corrupt. That it will be temporary, not permanent. But he has said many things over the years. And Nigerians have learned, the hard way, to ask: which Atiku are we supposed to believe?
The answer, we suspect, is whichever one gets him to the Villa. And that, more than any policy proposal, is the real problem. Because governance is not about what you say when you are campaigning. It is about what you do when you are finally in charge. And on that score, Atiku’s track record of reversals does not inspire confidence. It inspires only one question: if he cannot hold a consistent position on subsidy, what else might he change his mind about?
The truth is that subsidy was a monster that ate our budgets and starved our states. The truth is that going back to it would undo whatever progress we have made. The truth is that the pain Nigerians are feeling today is real, but the answer is not to return to a broken system. The answer is to fix the one we have—and under President Tinubu’s leadership, that is exactly what is happening. The reforms are working, the savings are being deployed, and Nigeria is finally on a path to fiscal sustainability.
That is the conversation we should be having. Not whether Atiku has flipped again. But whether any of them—any of them—are serious enough to tell us what we need to hear, not what we want to hear. President Tinubu has shown that he is. That is the high price of political elasticity. It stretches trust until it snaps. And when it snaps, we are all left picking up the pieces.
By Emameh Gabriel
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