Tinubu in panic mode over subsidy plan – Atiku responds to FG’s transport fare reduction target

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has criticized President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s plan to lower transportation costs across the country, describing the initiative as “not policy innovation” but “panic dressed in presidential grammar.”

The response follows President Tinubu’s announcement that state governors have agreed to leverage Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and electric vehicles to bring down intra-state transit fares by October 1.

The initiative comes amid a sharp debate over fuel subsidies, after Atiku proposed replacing the current system with a production, focused subsidy framework targeting domestic crude refiners, a proposal the Presidency promptly dismissed as economic ignorance.

Reacting through his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku argued that the administration’s new commitment to cheaper fares is “a confession extracted by failure and forced by Atiku’s argument.”

“For more than three years, this government told Nigerians that hunger was reform, that collapsing purchasing power was sacrifice, and that ruinous fuel prices were the unavoidable price of progress,” Shaibu said.

He noted that after Atiku outlined a clear alternative to reduce fuel costs and protect household purchasing power, the administration hastily scrambled to adopt similar logic. 

“The bus driver knew it. The market woman knew it. The farmer knew it. Atiku knew it and built a policy around it. Tinubu mocked the idea. Now that Nigerians are rallying around Atiku’s cost-of-living message, the government is scrambling to borrow the logic it once condemned.”

Shaibu warned citizens against being misled by “another festival of committees, conversion statistics and October promises,” emphasizing that converting 120,000 vehicles is insufficient to rescue an economy of over 200 million people.

“Atiku’s point has always been simple: you do not fight poverty by making the basic energy that moves food, workers and commerce unaffordable,” Shaibu added. “CNG is useful, but it cannot become an alibi for three years of economic punishment. You cannot burn down the family budget, arrive with a conversion kit and demand applause for compassion.”