₦airaland Forum

PRESS STATEMENT

ATIKU TO TINUBU: YOU’RE THE IGNORAMUS IF YOU THINK SUFFERING IS ECONOMIC POLICY

Says Tinubu removed subsidy, retained the racket and handed Nigerians the bill

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has fired back at President Bola Tinubu, describing his attack on Atiku’s proposed petroleum-sector intervention as the insolent sermon of a failed economic experimenter who mistakes Nigerians’ capacity to endure suffering for evidence that his policies are working.

In a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said there was an almost comical audacity in Tinubu calling anyone economically ignorant after presiding over an economy where government revenues have ballooned while citizens’ purchasing power has collapsed.

Shaibu said: “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.

“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, and parents cannot settle school fees with statistics manufactured for State House applause.

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

“Tinubu should therefore spare Nigerians the economics lecture. A man who set the house on fire cannot ridicule another man for redesigning the fire extinguisher.”

Atiku added: “Tinubu and his gang of jesters should acquaint themselves with elementary economics before accusing anyone of ignorance. Economic prescriptions respond to prevailing conditions. Even a first-year economics student understands ceteris paribus — other things being equal.

“But other things are no longer equal in Tinubu’s Nigeria.

“Apparently fresh from a bowl of amala, Tinubu mounted the podium at Eagle Square and casually declared that ‘subsidy is gone’ without a credible transition plan or adequate protection against the inflationary consequences.

“Those three words were not economic policy. They were economic vandalism by presidential fiat.

“Petrol prices exploded. Transportation and production costs followed. The naira depreciated sharply. Food prices soared. Businesses buckled and household purchasing power was decimated.

“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. Only incompetence insists on yesterday’s prescription after today’s conditions have changed.

“Atiku is not proposing the resurrection of the corrupt, open-ended subsidy bazaar. He proposes a targeted, capped, budgeted, time-bound and independently audited production-support mechanism tied to domestic production and protected against arbitrage.

“The difference is simple: Tinubu pronounced first and searched for a plan afterwards. Atiku studied the consequences and produced a solution.

“But there is an even greater hypocrisy in Tinubu’s subsidy sermon.

“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, including about ₦7.13 trillion classified as Energy Security and ₦8.67 trillion in under-recoveries.

“So what exactly did Tinubu remove?

“If subsidy is dead, why are under-recoveries alive? If corruption was eliminated, why has opacity survived?

“Tinubu has given Nigerians the worst of both worlds: he removed the relief but retained the opaque costs. Nigerians got the pain; government kept the bill.

“Now that Tinubu tells Nigerians that one of the great achievements of subsidy removal is that states which previously struggled to pay salaries now receive larger FAAC allocations, he must realise that this argument is economically shallow and, worse still, an admission of developmental failure.”

“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.

“If the price Nigerians must pay for governors to meet their basic obligations is crushing transport costs, diminished purchasing power, food inflation and deepening poverty, then Tinubu has merely transferred solvency from the kitchen tables of ordinary families to government treasuries.

“Worse still, this FAAC bonanza creates the wrong incentives. States should develop competitive economies, attract investment, exploit their comparative advantages, broaden their productive tax bases and create wealth. Instead, Tinubu is deepening an Abuja dependency economy where governors can wait every month for increasingly fat allocations from the centre.

“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.

“There is no economic morality in making a market woman poorer so that a governor can receive a bigger allocation. There is no developmental wisdom in emptying household pockets merely to fatten government accounts while Nigerians still confront bad roads, inadequate hospitals, failing schools and unemployment.

“Tinubu did not solve the structural weakness of the states. He simply threw more money at it and sent the bill to Nigerians.

“And since the Presidency has suddenly discovered the speed to respond to Atiku, let it show similar enthusiasm in explaining the approximately ₦30 trillion in Federation Account revenues, deductions, savings and transfers that Atiku has demanded be reconciled, as well as the ₦12.8 trillion Service-Wide Vote in the 2026 budget.

“You cannot scream ‘hoax’ at a proposal designed to ease hardship and suddenly become deaf and dumb when confronted with questions of fiscal opacity, alleged budget padding and questionable expenditure.

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

“Tinubu removed subsidy supposedly to save money, floated the naira and piled taxes and levies on Nigerians. Federation revenues ballooned, yet citizens became poorer.

“Economic reform is not measured by how fat government accounts become while citizens grow poorer. An economy exists to serve human beings, not family and friends.

“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.”

Signed:
Phrank Shaibu
Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication to Atiku Abubakar, Vice President of Nigeria (1999–2007) and Presidential Candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
21st August, 2026

Atiku, you repeatedly stated you would remove subsidy. Now you are saying you would bring subsidy. Atiku, you said you were chairman of the subsidy removal committee, and you said you recommended subsidy removal in phases. Now, you are saying you want to bring back something you wanted to remove.

Atiku, you either never understood the subsidy issue or you were not sincere about it. If you were not sincere about the removal, why should you be trusted to be sincere with bringing it back and sustaining it?

Do you want to say anything to make you president?

emkz:
Atiku, you repeatedly stated you would remove subsidy. Now you are saying you would bring subsidy. Atiku,

Having the ability to change one's mind with the benefit of hindsight is one of the hallmarks of a compassionate leader. Tinubu protested against Jonathan for removing fuel subsidy but he announced subsidy is gone on the first day of his inauguration. Despite the fuel subsidy removal turning out to be a complete disaster, he has refused to change course and bring some form of succour to ordinary Nigerians. He rather prefers to share bags of rice with his image inscribed upon them. Nigerians are not his serfs.

Atiku really scored own goal

Ignoramus Atiku, are you suffering?

Elderstale man talking rubbish always

See finishing

Atiku finished Tinubu and his army of zone Bees with this piece
Brilliant!! Just brilliant!! 👏 👏 👏

No

emkz:
Atiku, you repeatedly stated you would remove subsidy. Now you are saying you would bring subsidy. Atiku, you said you were chairman of the subsidy removal committee, and you said you recommended subsidy removal in phases. Now, you are saying you want to bring back something you wanted to remove.

Atiku, you either never understood the subsidy issue or you were not sincere about it. If you were not sincere about the removal, why should you be trusted to be sincere with bringing it back and sustaining it?

Do you want to say anything to make you president?

Your illiterate Master and poverty agent tinubu openly called subsidy a scam, and led many ignorant people like him to say that there is nothing like subsidy.
I am worried each time I hear tinubu talk about subsidy removal, he is a pure hypocrite and ignorant man.

Alhaji Atiku we don't want you,we are OK 👍 with president tinubu and his economics policies are yielding wonderful results

Since Atiku made the fuel subsidy return statement, Tinubu and his data boys have been on overdrive.

Subsidy must be returned.

U

manmade:
Alhaji Atiku we don't want you,we are OK 👍 with president tinubu and his economics policies are yielding wonderful results

You and who is OK with that embodiment of criminality at the helm. Which result are the supposed wonderful policies yielding.

Now. This is real opposition. Atiku is the right man for the job.

If only Obi had listen to wisdom in 2023 we won't have been suffering today.

Atiku is right on this one

GeneralPulal:
Atiku really scored own goal

Over head bicycle kick own goal like Marco Van Basten.

Curious345:
Atiku is right on this one

Even a clueless nonentity is entitled to his own opinion, that is the good thing about democrazy.

codedguy1:
U

You and who is OK with that embodiment of criminality at the helm. Which result are the supposed wonderful policies yielding.

Atiku should tell Nigerians how many times ASUU went on strike during the Obasanjo administration, when he was Vice President, and how many months Nigerian university students spent at home as a result. Some of those strikes lasted five months, three months, two weeks and even six months. Today, under this administration, ASUU has not embarked on any nationwide strike. So before Atiku lectures Nigerians about the state of education and the economy, perhaps he should first account for the record of the administration in which he served.

According to several records, ASUU embarked on at least seven major strikes during Obasanjo’s 1999–2007 administration:
1999: about 5 months (150 days)
2001: about 3 months (90 days)
2002: about 2 weeks (14 days)
2003: about 6 months (180 days), spilling into 2004
2005: about 3 days/2 weeks
2006: about 1 week
2007: about 3 months (90 days)

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.


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

Nice one from Atiku. Keep up this Constructive Criticism Part.

Tinubu Leadership style is Terrible and a Liability to the Nation.

Twist4u:
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.


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

Nice one from Atiku. Keep up this Constructive Criticism Part.

Tinubu Leadership style is Terrible and a Liability to the Nation.

AI GENERATED RUBBISH.

ANYONE THAT USES AI KNOWS THAT THAT IS A CHATGPT-GENERATED SPEECH.

YOU CAN GO ON CHATGPT AND TELL IT TO WRITE YOU A SPEECH THAT CLAIMS NELSON MANDELA WAS A TERRORIST AND IT WILL DO IT VERY CONVINCINGLY.

eddie7:
PRESS STATEMENT

ATIKU TO TINUBU: YOU’RE THE IGNORAMUS IF YOU THINK SUFFERING IS ECONOMIC POLICY

Says Tinubu removed subsidy, retained the racket and handed Nigerians the bill

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has fired back at President Bola Tinubu, describing his attack on Atiku’s proposed petroleum-sector intervention as the insolent sermon of a failed economic experimenter who mistakes Nigerians’ capacity to endure suffering for evidence that his policies are working.

In a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said there was an almost comical audacity in Tinubu calling anyone economically ignorant after presiding over an economy where government revenues have ballooned while citizens’ purchasing power has collapsed.

Shaibu said: “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.

“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, and parents cannot settle school fees with statistics manufactured for State House applause.

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

“Tinubu should therefore spare Nigerians the economics lecture. A man who set the house on fire cannot ridicule another man for redesigning the fire extinguisher.”

Atiku added: “Tinubu and his gang of jesters should acquaint themselves with elementary economics before accusing anyone of ignorance. Economic prescriptions respond to prevailing conditions. Even a first-year economics student understands ceteris paribus — other things being equal.

“But other things are no longer equal in Tinubu’s Nigeria.

“Apparently fresh from a bowl of amala, Tinubu mounted the podium at Eagle Square and casually declared that ‘subsidy is gone’ without a credible transition plan or adequate protection against the inflationary consequences.

“Those three words were not economic policy. They were economic vandalism by presidential fiat.

“Petrol prices exploded. Transportation and production costs followed. The naira depreciated sharply. Food prices soared. Businesses buckled and household purchasing power was decimated.

“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. Only incompetence insists on yesterday’s prescription after today’s conditions have changed.

“Atiku is not proposing the resurrection of the corrupt, open-ended subsidy bazaar. He proposes a targeted, capped, budgeted, time-bound and independently audited production-support mechanism tied to domestic production and protected against arbitrage.

“The difference is simple: Tinubu pronounced first and searched for a plan afterwards. Atiku studied the consequences and produced a solution.

“But there is an even greater hypocrisy in Tinubu’s subsidy sermon.

“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, including about ₦7.13 trillion classified as Energy Security and ₦8.67 trillion in under-recoveries.

“So what exactly did Tinubu remove?

“If subsidy is dead, why are under-recoveries alive? If corruption was eliminated, why has opacity survived?

“Tinubu has given Nigerians the worst of both worlds: he removed the relief but retained the opaque costs. Nigerians got the pain; government kept the bill.

“Now that Tinubu tells Nigerians that one of the great achievements of subsidy removal is that states which previously struggled to pay salaries now receive larger FAAC allocations, he must realise that this argument is economically shallow and, worse still, an admission of developmental failure.”

“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.

“If the price Nigerians must pay for governors to meet their basic obligations is crushing transport costs, diminished purchasing power, food inflation and deepening poverty, then Tinubu has merely transferred solvency from the kitchen tables of ordinary families to government treasuries.

“Worse still, this FAAC bonanza creates the wrong incentives. States should develop competitive economies, attract investment, exploit their comparative advantages, broaden their productive tax bases and create wealth. Instead, Tinubu is deepening an Abuja dependency economy where governors can wait every month for increasingly fat allocations from the centre.

“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.

“There is no economic morality in making a market woman poorer so that a governor can receive a bigger allocation. There is no developmental wisdom in emptying household pockets merely to fatten government accounts while Nigerians still confront bad roads, inadequate hospitals, failing schools and unemployment.

“Tinubu did not solve the structural weakness of the states. He simply threw more money at it and sent the bill to Nigerians.

“And since the Presidency has suddenly discovered the speed to respond to Atiku, let it show similar enthusiasm in explaining the approximately ₦30 trillion in Federation Account revenues, deductions, savings and transfers that Atiku has demanded be reconciled, as well as the ₦12.8 trillion Service-Wide Vote in the 2026 budget.

“You cannot scream ‘hoax’ at a proposal designed to ease hardship and suddenly become deaf and dumb when confronted with questions of fiscal opacity, alleged budget padding and questionable expenditure.

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

“Tinubu removed subsidy supposedly to save money, floated the naira and piled taxes and levies on Nigerians. Federation revenues ballooned, yet citizens became poorer.

“Economic reform is not measured by how fat government accounts become while citizens grow poorer. An economy exists to serve human beings, not family and friends.

“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.”

Signed:
Phrank Shaibu
Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication to Atiku Abubakar, Vice President of Nigeria (1999–2007) and Presidential Candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
21st August, 2026

AI GENERATED RUBBISH.

ANYONE THAT USES AI KNOWS THAT THAT IS A CHATGPT-GENERATED SPEECH.

YOU CAN GO ON CHATGPT AND TELL IT TO WRITE YOU A SPEECH THAT CLAIMS NELSON MANDELA WAS A TERRORIST AND IT WILL DO IT VERY CONVINCINGLY.

manmade:
Atiku should tell Nigerians how many times ASUU went on strike during the Obasanjo administration, when he was Vice President, and how many months Nigerian university students spent at home as a result. Some of those strikes lasted five months, three months, two weeks and even six months. Today, under this administration, ASUU has not embarked on any nationwide strike. So before Atiku lectures Nigerians about the state of education and the economy, perhaps he should first account for the record of the administration in which he served.

According to several records, ASUU embarked on at least seven major strikes during Obasanjo’s 1999–2007 administration:
1999: about 5 months (150 days)
2001: about 3 months (90 days)
2002: about 2 weeks (14 days)
2003: about 6 months (180 days), spilling into 2004
2005: about 3 days/2 weeks
2006: about 1 week
2007: about 3 months (90 days)

The funny thing about you people is you try to justify that criminal at the helm by pointing out the person's flaws that has challenged him. In this case Atiku.

For your info I also don't rate Atiku and I also think he himself should just go and sit down because I don't believe he will do any better. He also has a serious integrity issue and we don't need criminals at the helm.

Now I am sure you will now bring out the flaws of Obi because I have cancelled the 2 other leading candidates and I am sure you will find negative things to say about Obi concerning his stint as Anambra gov. which means all major candidates have flaws even you have flaws that can be accentuated if you run. So you can go ahead and list obis flaws. Good luck to that.

Truth of the matter is that we must have a president, but we must NOT choose the worst kind of human being to rule us just because of tribe or religion.

codedguy1:
The funny thing about you people is you try to justify that criminal at the helm by pointing out the person's flaws that has challenged him. In this case Atiku.

For your info I also don't rate Atiku and I also think he himself should just go and sit down because I don't believe he will do any better. He also has a serious integrity issue and we don't need criminals at the helm.

Now I am sure you will now bring out the flaws of Obi because I have cancelled the 2 other leading candidates and I am sure you will find negative things to say about Obi concerning his stint as Anambra gov. which means all major candidates have flaws even you have flaws that can be accentuated if you run. So you can go ahead and list obis flaws. Good luck to that.

Truth of the matter is that we must have a president, but we must NOT choose the worst kind of human being to rule us just because of tribe or religion.

I will rather deliberately void my vote than voting for Peter obi that created miracles center in anambra state for students to be cheating during waec and neco, he was owning all the government contractors and claimed he was keeping money for the state in a Bank owned by him or where he is the largest shareholder. What corruption is greater than that?

manmade:
I will rather deliberately void my vote than voting for Peter obi that created miracles center in anambra state for students to be cheating during waec and neco, he was owning all the government contractors and claimed he was keeping money for the state in a Bank owned by him or where he is the largest shareholder. What corruption is greater than that?

Let me be explicitly clear. The criminal at the helm is the worst of the 3 in my opinion. You can argue otherwise.

Obi is the best OUT OF THE 3 in my opinion. You didn't disappoint by pointing out flaws inObis stint like I predicted.

Voiding your vote is a tacit support for the incumbent as I see it. Like I said it's your choice.

Your are mentioning Obis flaws even controversial ones, if I start mentioning the flaws of the other 2 people now, that is confirmed flaw abi corruption charges we would need another platform to finish listing them.

I am not saying Obi is a saint but I am saying he is far better that the other 2, IN MY OPINION.

helinues:
Ignoramus Atiku, are you suffering?
Elderstale man talking rubbish always

If fuel subsidies return, there would be:
1. Paucity of funds for governments
2.Fuel scarcity, long queues and black markets.
3.Incessant ASUU strikes.
4. Return of Ways and Means and printing of more Naira notes.
5. Massive depletion of foreign reserves.
6. Increase in debt/revenue ratio, probably back to 97%.
7. Governor’s inability to pay salaries.
8. Governor’s inability to fund state police.
9. Possible NELFUND discontinuation.
10. Deterioration of insecurity.
11. Worsening budget deficit.
12. Worsening Infrastructure deficit