By Eshioromeh Sebastian
The battle lines for 2027 are being drawn early, and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is not waiting for the starting gun.
In a blistering statement on Thursday, he told President Bola Tinubu to start drafting his handover notes, arguing that Nigerians have run out of patience with the current administration’s economic management.
The message, delivered through Atiku’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, took direct aim at the Federal Government’s latest move to collaborate with state governors on reducing public transport fares. Atiku dismissed the initiative as a desperate patch on a wound the government itself inflicted when it removed fuel subsidies without putting adequate safety nets in place.
“President Tinubu, Nigerians have paid enough for your economic experiment. Too little. Too inadequate. Too late. Your time is up. Prepare your handover. We are coming to make life affordable again,” Atiku declared.
The former vice president turned his sights on the administration’s CNG conversion drive, arguing that the government’s own figures expose its failure. With just 120,000 vehicles converted over three years against an estimated 14 million on Nigerian roads, Atiku said the numbers speak for themselves.
“That is less than one per cent. These are not opposition figures—these are the government’s own statistics. If a student scored less than one per cent in an examination, no school would call that progress. Yet Tinubu expects Nigerians to reward that kind of performance with another term. The reality is stark: Nigeria cannot survive another four years of this,” he said.
Atiku also seized on Tinubu’s recent comment that cheaper fuel ought to mean cheaper fares, calling it an inadvertent confession that the administration has been out of touch with ordinary citizens from the start.
He argued that subsidy removal, implemented without a proper cushioning plan, has sent transport costs, food prices, and business expenses soaring over the past three years—all while Nigerians cried out for relief.
“Now that elections are approaching, and Nigerians are warming up to Atiku’s proposal for a production-based subsidy, the same government that mocked that idea has suddenly discovered that people need cheaper transport. That is medicine after death. You cannot break a man’s leg, leave him in agony for three years, then show up with crutches and expect praise,” he said.
Atiku laid out what he called a fundamental difference in philosophy between himself and the president. Where Tinubu, he argued, hands out palliatives after creating hardship, Atiku said he would go after the root causes.
“We will support domestic refining. We will monitor every barrel. We will put a cap on costs. We will bring down energy prices. And we will make sure relief reaches the commuter, the farmer, the trader, and the small business owner—not just politically connected middlemen. That is the distinction: Tinubu creates problems and distributes crumbs. Atiku will tackle problems at the source.”
He closed with a pointed question: “What has Tinubu actually solved if the bus becomes cheaper to run but the passenger can no longer afford to board it? A cheaper bus without a paying passenger is not economic recovery—it is a mirage.”
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