Obi Atiku Subsidy Disagreement: NDC Candidate Backs Removal, Rejects Restoration Plan
Presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Obi, has publicly broken with fellow opposition figure and African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar over the future of Nigeria’s fuel subsidy policy, reaffirming his support for its removal even as Atiku pledges to restore it if elected in 2027.
Speaking on Monday at a conference organised by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Obi said the mismanagement of the gains from subsidy removal should not, on its own, be a reason to reverse the policy.”Well, I subscribe, and I maintain that you need to remove subsidy. Mismanagement of the proceeds should not be the reason for not removing it,” Obi said
The comments come amid a renewed national debate over the policy, which President Bola Tinubu announced shortly after assuming office on May 29, 2023, declaring at the time that “subsidy is gone.” Since then, prices of commodities, transportation fares and other essential goods and services have risen sharply, with the decision generating mixed reactions among Nigerians, some supportive and others opposed on the grounds that it worsened hardship for ordinary citizens.
Atiku, who had not earlier opposed the removal of the subsidy, recently pledged to restore it if elected president in 2027. Speaking during an interview streamed live on Facebook with some Hausa-language news platforms, Atiku said the removal of the subsidy had failed to improve the lives of Nigerians. His media aide, Phrank Shuaibu, further explained that Atiku’s proposed reform would replace what he called Nigeria’s “old import-subsidy architecture” with a targeted, capped, transparently budgeted and independently audited production subsidy designed to lower energy costs while accelerating domestic refining.
Obi, however, rejected the idea that reversing the policy was the right response to its shortcomings, arguing instead that the core failure lay in how the government managed the resulting savings rather than in the decision to remove the subsidy itself. “What we should have done is that when we removed it, we should have given the people alternative usage for the subsidy,” he said. He went on to allege that funds saved from subsidy removal had themselves been mismanaged and stolen, insisting the fundamental problem was not the removal but how the resulting savings were handled. “What we have today is that the removal and the attendant resources being recovered is also being mismanaged and stolen,” Obi alleged.
Defending the consistency of his position, Obi pointed back to his own 2023 presidential campaign manifesto, arguing that he had proposed a structured, accountable approach to subsidy removal well before Tinubu’s administration carried out its own version of the policy. “Go to my manifesto, I said it before, I said I will do it in an organised manner and whatever we recover would be invested appropriately,” Obi said.
The disagreement between Obi and Atiku adds a fresh layer of complexity to opposition politics ahead of the 2027 general election, with the two men now diverging sharply on one of the most consequential economic policy questions facing the country, despite both nominally standing in opposition to the ruling APC. Atiku’s restoration pledge has already drawn sharp criticism from within the Presidency’s camp, with former Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike describing him as a “voodoo economist” and accusing him of saying whatever he believed would appeal to voters, while also questioning whether Atiku was reversing his own earlier position, given that he had previously alleged the subsidy regime itself was fraudulent. recalled that Tinubu, Atiku and Obi had all promised to remove fuel subsidy during the 2023 presidential campaign, describing the system at the time as corrupt.
As of the time of filing, Atiku’s campaign had not issued a direct response to Obi’s latest remarks in Port Harcourt, and it remains unclear whether the emerging rift between the two opposition figures will affect broader coordination efforts among parties seeking to challenge the ruling APC in 2027.
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