By FAROOQ KPEROOGI

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has slammed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu over criticism of his proposed petroleum-sector intervention, saying the President’s attack reflects “the insolent sermon of a failed economic experimenter.”

Reacting on Friday through his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said Tinubu removed fuel subsidy but retained the opaque costs, leaving Nigerians to bear the burden.

“If economic ignorance had a presidential seal, Tinubu and his family would be its official logo.

“Here is an administration that detonated simultaneous fuel-price, exchange-rate and cost-of-living shocks across a fragile economy, watched millions become poorer, and now struts around Abuja demanding applause for the wreckage. That is not reform. It is economic arson followed by propaganda about the ashes,” Shaibu quoted Atiku as saying.

Atiku argued that rising FAAC allocations mean nothing to citizens battling hardship.

“Tinubu’s courtiers may clap because FAAC allocations have increased, but hungry Nigerians cannot boil FAAC figures for dinner. Businesses cannot power factories with presidential speeches, workers cannot pay transport fares with macroeconomic grammar,” he said.

“A government that grows richer while its citizens grow poorer is not reforming an economy. It is extracting from its people,” he added.

The African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate said Tinubu’s May 29, 2023 declaration that “subsidy is gone” was made without a transition plan.

He blamed it for triggering spikes in petrol prices, transport costs, food inflation and naira depreciation.

“Those three words were not economic policy. They were economic vandalism by presidential fiat,” Atiku stated.

“Having destroyed the economic assumptions upon which previous prescriptions rested, Tinubu’s propagandists now accuse Atiku of inconsistency for responding to the disaster they created. That is not inconsistency. That is economics.”

Atiku clarified that he is not proposing a return to the old import-subsidy regime. Under his Atiku Economic Recovery Plan, AERP, he proposes a “targeted, capped, budgeted, time-bound and independently audited production-support mechanism tied to domestic production and protected against arbitrage.”

He accused the Tinubu administration of hypocrisy, citing NNPC’s audited accounts which reportedly show about ?17.5 trillion in energy-security costs and under-recoveries between 2023 and 2024.

“Tinubu told Nigerians subsidy was dead. Yet NNPC’s audited accounts reportedly contain approximately ?17.5 trillion in energy-security costs and petroleum under-recoveries. So what exactly did Tinubu remove? If subsidy is dead, why are under-recoveries alive?” Atiku asked.

The former Vice President also faulted the claim that bigger FAAC allocations to states represent a success of subsidy removal.

“You do not build a federation by impoverishing citizens so that Abuja can send bigger cheques to governors. That is robbing households to subsidise governments,” he said.

According to him, the surge in federal allocations is creating dependency instead of forcing states to grow their economies.

“Why undertake difficult reforms, industrialise or expand productive capacity when Abuja provides an ever-growing monthly cheque? That is not fiscal federalism. It is fiscal sedation and rascality,” he said.

Atiku further demanded accountability for about ?30 trillion in Federation Account revenues, deductions, savings and transfers, as well as the ?12.8 trillion Service-Wide Vote in the 2026 budget.

If Tinubu can mobilise an army of propagandists to attack Atiku within hours, surely he can find one accountant to explain his books,” he said.

He said Nigerians have paid too high a price for current economic policies.

“Economic reform is not measured by how fat government accounts become while citizens grow poorer. The real ignorance is believing suffering is economic policy. Tinubu removed the subsidy from Nigerians’ pockets, but he is yet to remove the questions from his books. Nigerians have paid enough for Tinubunomics. They should not be sentenced to another four years of the bitter experiment.” (Saturday Tribune)

•Farooq Kperoogi is a US-based Nigerian journalist, scholar and syndicated columnist.