- Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to President Tinubu, publicly challenged Atiku Abubakar’s pledge to restore fuel subsidy if elected in 2027
- Onanuga argued the subsidy plan conflicts with the Petroleum Industry Act and could undermine Nigeria’s growing domestic refining capacity
- The presidency questioned how the subsidy would be funded and whether Atiku would seek to amend existing petroleum legislation
President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, has challenged former Vice President Atiku Abubakar over his promise to bring back fuel subsidies if he wins the 2027 presidential election, saying the proposal is fiscally irresponsible and legally problematic.
In a statement released on Thursday, August 20, 2026, Onanuga said Atiku’s plan contradicts the former vice president’s own earlier position.
Source: Twitter
Before losing the 2023 election, Atiku had publicly argued that the subsidy regime should be removed.
What the Presidency said about subsidy
Onanuga rejected Atiku’s suggestion that scrapping the subsidy created a N30 trillion windfall, calling the figure a figment of his imagination.
He explained that fuel subsidy was never a cash reserve but rather a cost absorbed by the NNPC each time it sold petrol below what it cost to supply.
He noted that the Nigerian government still owes trillions of naira in unpaid subsidy costs sitting in NNPC’s books.
The Petroleum Industry Act, which took effect in June 2023, legally ended the subsidy arrangement. Onanuga said restoring it would require Atiku to identify a funding source, outline a new pump price, and potentially push for amendments to the existing law.
The presidency also pointed to structural changes in Nigeria’s petroleum sector as a reason the old model can no longer apply. The Dangote Refinery now supplies a significant volume of locally refined petrol, a development Onanuga said would not have happened under a subsidy regime. He argued that Atiku’s proposal, if implemented, would threaten smaller domestic refineries, lead to job losses, and end Nigeria’s newly established exports of refined products to Europe, Asia, and the United States.
Presidency: Money that once funded subsidy now goes to states
Onanuga said the roughly N15 trillion that previously went into the subsidy now flows to the three tiers of government. In July 2026, the federation account shared about N3 trillion among federal, state, and local governments, a record figure he credited to the removal of the fuel price discount.
He asked Atiku to answer specific questions: what the annual cost of the programme would be, which revenue stream would fund it, whether the government would borrow to cover it, and how payments would be shielded from the corruption that plagued the old regime.
The statement acknowledged that rising fuel and transport costs remain a genuine burden on Nigerian households, but argued that restoring subsidies is not a sustainable answer. Onanuga pointed to the government’s push for Compressed Natural Gas, which he said is about 70 per cent cheaper than petrol, as a more workable path to reducing energy costs for citizens.
He called on Atiku and other political actors to present Nigerians with the full legal and fiscal details of any subsidy restoration plan before the 2027 vote.
Wike attacks Atiku
Previously, Legit.ng reported that FCT Minister Nyesom Wike dismissed former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as a “voodoo economist,” accusing him of shifting positions on fuel subsidy policy, while insisting that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu remains the frontrunner heading into the 2027 presidential election.
Wike made the remarks on Thursday, August 20, during a media briefing held while he inspected infrastructure projects across Abuja.
Source: Legit.ng