The spokesperson for the 2027 presidential campaign of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, Kenneth Okonkwo, has defended Atiku’s proposal to reintroduce petrol subsidy if elected, saying the plan is primarily aimed at making fuel more affordable for Nigerians.
Okonkwo, who spoke on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, said President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had misunderstood the policy being proposed by Atiku, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
Atiku had announced on Wednesday that he would restore petrol subsidy if elected president in 2027. The declaration sparked controversy, particularly because of his reported support for subsidy removal during the 2023 presidential election.
The former vice-president also accused the Tinubu administration of failing to properly account for the funds saved following the removal of the subsidy.
Reacting to the proposal, Tinubu described it as evidence of “serious ignorance of governance and economy”, arguing that the former subsidy system placed a significant financial burden on the country.
However, Okonkwo insisted that Atiku was not advocating a return to the previous subsidy arrangement, which he described as a system that depended heavily on imported petrol and was vulnerable to alleged manipulation.
“The whole idea of the Atiku plan is affordability of fuel to the ordinary Nigerian,” he said.
He added: “It is ignorance of Tinubu to say that Atiku wants to go back to the subsidy of the old.”
According to Okonkwo, Atiku’s proposal, known as the Atiku Fuel Affordability Plan (AFAP), would rely on increased domestic refining capacity and government intervention to ensure that local refineries have access to crude oil at affordable prices.
He argued that supplying crude to domestic refineries at a reasonable price would reduce production costs and eventually bring down the price of petrol for consumers.
“He said, ‘I will supply the needed crude to our local refineries at a price that will be fair enough for them to use to produce the fuel at a reduced and affordable price to Nigerians,’” Okonkwo said.
The campaign spokesperson further argued that Nigeria would not have needed the former petrol subsidy arrangement if successive administrations had developed sufficient domestic refining capacity and ensured adequate fuel production.
He said the previous subsidy system became associated with corruption partly because Nigeria relied extensively on imported petrol.
“This was the way the subsidy of the old operated. They were importing 100 per cent of the fuel. We didn’t have any refinery,” he said.
Okonkwo alleged that the arrangement created room for the manipulation of import volumes and prices, with the financial burden eventually falling on Nigerians.
He, however, stressed that Atiku’s proposal was fundamentally different from the former system.
“Atiku is not going back to that and cannot even go back to that,” he said.