Tinubu's Campaign Wants Atiku To Show The Legal Basis For His Subsidy
Abuja · Tuesday 22 September 2026
The APC Presidential Campaign Council has challenged Atiku Abubakar to explain the legal and fiscal basis of his proposed petrol subsidy, demanding the detail behind a plan he set out earlier this month.
What Atiku actually proposed
Not a return to the old import subsidy. A production subsidy that would lower the cost of crude supplied to qualifying Nigerian refineries, explicitly not applying to petrol refined abroad. He argued that Dangote Refinery's warning about price controls supported rather than undermined the idea.
The three numbers that would settle it
| Question | Who can answer it |
|---|---|
| Annual cost of the feedstock discount | Atiku's campaign |
| Which law permits it | Atiku's campaign |
| How the volumes get audited | Nobody has said |
The third row is what destroyed the last subsidy regime.
The old subsidy did not collapse because subsidies are impossible. It collapsed because nobody could verify how much fuel entered the country.
What is really being argued about
Whether the 2023 removal was worth it. The finance ministry puts the amount mobilised for the federation at 15.8 trillion naira between June 2023 and December 2025, and a governor of the president's own party said earlier this month that states rather than the presidency should account for how it was spent. Atiku is offering to give part of that back in a different form. The APC is asking him to price it. Neither side has yet published a figure, which is the entire problem with this debate.
Reporting: The Whistler, Arise News and the State House.
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