Just this February of 2026; Atiku Abubakar, former Vice-President and the Presidential candidate of the Alliance for Democratic Coalition (ADC) spoke blatantly on what he has always intended and advocated for overtime:
”Nigeria would have been better served by selling the refineries pre-rehabilitation to avoid ballooning debt and the steady depreciation of what have effectively become liabilities. -AA”
As the 2027 Elections get nearer and the public intelligence shows that the Nigerian people wants petrol price to reduce drastically and has pinpointed the removal of fuel subsidy as the major cause of the high costs; Atiku’s Media team found a new name for his constant campaigns for selling off the refineries and hand over the whole of the oil sector to Dangote and other Trillionaires. They poetically call it – “production subsidy model.”
What does “production subsidy” mean? In the words of Phrank Shuaibu, Atiku’s Special Assistant on Media by September
”If government wants to provide additional relief beyond what lower crude-input costs can sustainably deliver, then government must pay for that relief openly. It must be budgeted. It must be capped. It must be audited. Nigerians must know exactly what is being spent and what they are receiving in return.
You cannot announce a politically convenient petrol price and quietly dump the cost on the refinery.”
Atiku is simply asking the Tinubu government to fund Dangote the more if it does not want Dangote to increase fuel prices. Atiku is also asking that government does not have any more role to play in production of oil and gas. He is asking that the public refineries be sold off and the government should depend more on Dangote and others.
The rhetoric about “production model” is also a furtherance of Atiku Abubakar asking that government should totally hands off the oil and gas sector and put the masses at the behests of the private profiteers. Of course, these are Atiku’s friends and cronies.
It must be noted that the Tinubu government is already handing over the whole of the regulations of the oil and gas sector to Dangote and the likes. It is of public knowledge that Dangote determines the price of petrol now. And NNPLC is usually forced to kow-tow to these prices. Then Nigerians are forced to pay very heavily for petrol and gas.
Atiku’s “subsidy production” model does not care about the consumers. It cares more about Dangote and the rest. Atiku says that “the subsidy follows the barrel refined in Nigeria.” And he wants crude oil to be sold cheaply to Dangote and the rest, yet these private hands should not be regulated. Atiku goes on to cry on behalf of Dangote that:
”Dangote raised concerns about margins, price controls and policy uncertainty. The Presidency somehow converted that into a prophecy that the economy would collapse…Dangote is right that a refinery should not be forced to carry the burden of an artificially imposed price. We agree.”
Atiku says that Dangote’s high prices cannot collapse the economy and that he should be subsidized through cheaper crude oil instead. What Atiku simply means is that Dangote should never be regulated, and that Nigeria should even hand over the crude oil wells and rigs to him and other private profiteers too. Atiku is asking for a total selling off of not just the refineries but the whole of the oil and gas sector.
While the same Atiku, for the sake of electoral politics, tries to show compassion to the masses over the high costs of fuel by also saying that “Nigerians are also right that the present cost of fuel, transportation, food and doing business has become unbearable;” it is clear that Atiku and his scriptwriters only devote very few words to “reducing the cost of producing fuel in Nigeria.” Their major interests are the interests of Dangote and other business associates of Atiku.
Nigerians must not be deceived by poetics and invectives of Atiku and his scriptwriters. Atiku will only further Obasanjo, Jonathan, Buhari and Tinubu has done by totally privatizing the oil and gas sector. Their new packaged lies are just meant to deceiving the people with economic jargons.
With Atiku’s”production subsidy” jargons, only Dangote and others will be protected. And what matters to Dangote and others is profits upon profits. That’s why Dangote constantly increase fuel prices, giving all sorts of false excuses.
Atiku’s “production subsidy” jargons also talks about local production instead of “import productions.” His scriptwriters blames the rising costs of petrol prices of importing. But we ask, what is the capacity of the Dangote Refinery to produce fuel for over 250 million Nigerians. Why is NNPC still verily depended upon? Atiku wants the NNPC to be sold off “pre-rehabilitation” so that private hands can control it.
In pure capitalist economics, Dangote and others should never be interested in activities of the public refineries, they should show capacity and compete. But Nigerian capitalism is Agberoistic! Public wealth is simply converted into private hands. Dangoge Refinery itself is a big example. Godwin Emefiele, the then CBN governor under President Buhari “provided domestic currency support/guarantees (such as intervention/local currency financing or support-related arrangements around N125 billion to N575 billion over time) to Dangote in other to be able to build his refinery. This is in addition to the $1billion equity gotten initially from Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC.) Without these public funds and financial guarantees, ther would have been no Dangote Refinery. The same refinery is almost not regulated at all as the Oil regulatory agencies have cowed and bowed.
Paul Ibe, Atiku’s Media Aide, in his response to my last piece posited that “One can certainly debate whether such a production subsidy is fiscally sustainable, whether it would distort the petroleum market, how it would comply with the Petroleum Industry Act, how much it would cost and whether savings would actually reach consumers. Those are legitimate policy questions.” He tries to direct how I dig into the new packaged lies of his boss. But all his so-called legitimate questions are rhetorical!
Nigeria has been subsidizing Dangote and the private sector in oil and gas already. Has petrol prices reduced? NO! Paul Ibe and the other scriptwriters of Atiku should know that what Nigerians want is to pay very cheaply for the oil that belongs to us all. There is no country producing oil that sells oil so costly to her citizens. The comparison of Nigeria with other West African countries is not only embarrassing but manipulating. Which of these West African countries are oil-producing like Nigeria? Iran is oil-producing and also at war. Their petrol is just #35 per litre.
Why is Iran’s oil cheaper while at war, while Dangote and other private profiteers use the same war as excuse to increase petrol price in Nigeria?
The answer is that Iran’s oil production and even distribution is publicly owned and controlled. Nigeria’s petrol is very expensive because Dangote and others care more about their private profits rather than the pockets of the masses. So, they brazenly increase petrol price while the masses suffer.
Finally, I have shown here that Atiku’s rhetorics about “production subsidy” is clearly jargons and just a furthering of the current subsidy removal regimes that have made petrol price gone higher and the private profiteers gone very richer. I have also shown that further subsidizing of the same private producers will plunge Nigeria into more poverty and hardship as the world Bank and IMF data has shown. By the first quarter of 2026, oil subsidy removals has added 7.1 million Nigerians to the over 33 percentage of poverty-stricken people. I have also shown that Atiku’s antecedents and even the details of his current publicity stunts gears towards further privatization and total deregulation of the oil sector. The talks about “restoring the subsidy” is just another form of packaged lies and promises.
The alternative to Atiku’s fake proposals of “restoring the production subsidy” is to return of “consumers’ subsidy.” As Omoyele Sowore of the African Action Congress (AAC) has always posited; “the subsidy is the only benefit Nigerians get.” To get off the subsidy scams and such other fiscal burdens, public refineries must be revamped and made to work for the people, not a few. The only reason why Late President Yar’adua’s regime was the only one that reduced petrol prices was because that regime did not “remove fuel subsidies” and bow to the subsidizing of private producers like Dangote and Otedola. Yar’adua made two of the refineries to start working, and petrol prices reduced. Nigerians need a president that will make all the public refineries work excellently and reduce petrol price to below #500.
Atiku’s production subsidy is an advancement of Tinubu’s oil subsidy removals. The equation will be the continuous poverty and hardships caused by petrol price hikes. The way to go is to return the oil subsidies to public refineries and reduce the prices of fuel drastically for the people!
Leave a Reply