By Ibrahim Nasiru
The panic currently ripping through the media directorate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is as telling as it is entertaining. Following the unveiling of the Atiku Economic Recovery Plan (AERP) 2027, which outlines a strategic return to a targeted petroleum subsidy mode, the establishment has rushed to the printing presses.
A classic example is a trending, heavily coordinated campaign authored by Yusuf Musa, the CEO of Policy Analysis Ltd. Musa and his fellow establishment apologists have rushed to demand detailed annual cost sheets, legislative timelines, and structural specifications from former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
They want to drown a brilliant policy alternative in a sea of bureaucratic paperwork. But this desperate line of questioning reveals a profound truth: the incumbent administration is terrified of an opposition leader who dares to prioritize human dignity over cold accounting spreadsheets.
Let us address the fundamental dishonesty at the core of the critics’ questions. The presidency demands to know exactly how much a domestic subsidy model will cost, yet they have spent over three years completely failing to account for the massive fiscal windfall generated by the removal of the petrol subsidy.
They boast of generating trillions of naira in savings for the Federation Account, but they turn a blind eye while Nigerian families face historic hyperinflation, crippling transport logistics, and empty dining tables.
An economy does not exist to serve the mathematical aesthetics of a central bank ledger; it exists to serve human beings. By asking how Atiku will fund relief, the administration is admitting that its own priorities lie in building up fat government accounts while the populace starves.
Furthermore, Yusuf Musa’s frantic follow-up assertions regarding “outstanding structural questions” completely misinterpret the nature of responsible governance.
True leadership requires a continuous audit of policy outcomes, not a blind allegiance to failed donor-checklist economics. When the petrol subsidy was removed in May 2023, the Nigerian electorate was promised that the resulting savings would be directed toward ending extreme poverty, securing rural farmlands, and completely modernizing public education.
Instead, the public has witnessed the covert mismanagement of national revenues and an untracked, multi-trillion-naira energy security expenditure by the national oil company.
If a corporate policy experiment results in absolute human misery and rampant institutional leakages, a true democrat does not stubbornly double down on failure out of pride. They pivot, they recalibrate, and they protect the citizens.
Atiku Abubakar’s “capped barrel” strategy directly answers the very questions his critics claim he is avoiding. His proposal is not a nostalgic return to the corrupt, import-driven elite arbitrage of the past.
It is a production-tied intervention. By supplying domestic refineries with crude oil at a capped, budgeted price, the subsidy moves from unverifiable foreign invoices directly to verifiable local production barrels.
Musa’s Policy Analysis outfit disingenuously asks which questions remain unanswered; the only question left outstanding is why the current administration continues to export domestic prosperity to foreign middlemen while squeezing the life out of Nigerian businesses.
The lines are now firmly drawn for 2027. The presidency can continue to hide behind its defensive articles, demanding mathematical blueprints while their current policies continue to crush the middle class. But the streets of Nigeria have already completed their own audit. They do not need a spreadsheet to tell them they can no longer afford to transport their goods to market or send their children to school.
Atiku’s targeted domestic subsidy blueprint represents an unyielding commitment to human-centric economics, and no amount of boardroom rhetoric from corporate mercenaries can obscure that alternative vision.
Chief Ibrahim Nasiru
A Public Affairs Analyst writes from Abuja
