Nigerians rejected your ideas at the polls, Presidency replies Atiku

The presidency says the ideas Atiku Abubakar suggested he would’ve implemented if elected president were rejected by Nigerians who chose Bola Tinubu as president instead of Atiku in the 2023 election.

Bayo Onanuga, President Tinubu’s spokesperson, said this in a Sunday statement in response to an earlier one by Atiku where he outlined what he would have done differently if elected president to prevent the cost of living crisis Nigerians are going through.

In his statement, Atiku said he would not have removed the petrol subsidy at once and would not have done it at the same time as other reforms, such as the floating of the naira.

He said his government would have adopted “a gradualist approach in the implementation of the subsidy reforms. Subsidies would not have been removed suddenly and completely.”

The former vice president, who came second in last year’s presidential election, also said he would have privatised the four state-owned refineries contrary to the utilisation of public funds to repair them by the Tinubu administration.

In his response, Mr Onanuga said Atiku’s programmes “would have plunged Nigeria into a worse situation or run a regime of cronyism.”

Read Mr Onanuga’s full statement below.

OUR INITIAL RESPONSE TO ALHAJI ATIKU ABUBAKAR

We have just read a statement credited to former vice president Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, in which he tried to discredit President Bola Tinubu’s economic reform programmes while pushing his untested agenda as a better alternative.

First, Alhaji Atiku’s ideas, which lacked details, were rejected by Nigerians in the 2023 poll.

If he had won the election, we believe he would have plunged Nigeria into a worse situation or run a regime of cronyism.

Abubakar lost the election partly because he vowed to sell the NNPC and other assets to his friends. Nigerians have not forgotten this, nor would they be comforted by Atiku’s antecedents when he ran the economy in the first term of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government between 1999 and 2003.

As vice president, Atiku supervised a questionable privatisation programme. He and his boss demonstrated a lack of faith in our educational system, and both went to establish their universities while they allowed ours to flounder.

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.

Despite the futile attempt to hoodwink Nigerians again in his statement, it is gratifying that the former Vice President could not repudiate the economic reforms pursued by the Tinubu administration because they are the right things to do.

His advocacy for a gradualist approach only showed that he was not in tune with the enormity of problems inherited by President Tinubu.

It is so easy to paint a flowery to-do list. It is expected of an election loser.

President Tinubu met a country facing several grave challenges. Fuel subsidies were siphoning away enormous resources we could ill afford, and there was criminal arbitrage in the forex market.

No leader worth his name will allow these two economic disorders to persist without moving to end them surgically.

While advocating for gradual reforms may sound appealing, Tinubu took measures that should have been taken decades ago by Alhaji Abubakar and his boss when they had the opportunity.

Alhaji Abubakar calls for empathy and a human face to reforms. We have no problem with this as it resonates well with our administration’s focus. President Tinubu has consistently emphasised the need for compassion and protection of the most vulnerable.

The administration has prioritised social safety nets and targeted support for those affected by recent economic transitions.

Bayo Onanuga

Special Adviser to the President

(Information and Strategy)