The National Chairman of All Progressives Congress, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda, says fuel subsidy reversal talks can’t be reduced to election season promises .
This is as he condemned former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar’s proposal to reverse the removal of petrol subsidy if elected president in 2027.
Yilwatda, in a statement on Monday in Abuja, described Atiku’s proposal as a deeply troubling policy u-turn that raised serious questions about the opposition’s preparedness to govern Nigeria.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the statement was issued by Yilwatda’s Special Adviser on Media and Information Strategy, Mr Abimbola Tooki.
This Happened (EP 419): El-Rufai Files ₦10bn Suit Against ICPC Over Family Access. He said Nigerians deserved more than election-season declarations, adding that any proposal to restore a costly subsidy regime must be subjected to rigorous scrutiny.
This, he said, was particularly given the enormous fiscal burden subsidies placed on public finances and the distortions it created in the economy.
According to the statement, Yilwatda made the remarks during a visit to the headquarters of the City Boy Movement in Abuja, where he inspected the organisation’s facilities and interacted with its leadership.
He noted that the opposition had been challenged repeatedly over the past three years to tell Nigerians what it would do differently if entrusted with power, yet no serious, coherent and convincing alternative had emerged.
Yilwatda said it was therefore suspicious that, after more than three years of silence on a comprehensive governing agenda, Atiku was only now, about four months before the 2027 general election, presenting a policy that could reverse hard-won economic adjustments.
According to the APC national chairman, Atiku’s proposal will set the country’s development trajectory back several years.
“Economic policy cannot be reduced to election-season promises. Nigerians deserve to know precisely where the money will come from.
“What sectors will bear the cost and whether such a policy can be sustained without reopening the fiscal pressures that necessitated reform in the first place,” Yilwatda said.
He maintained that the removal of subsidy was a difficult but necessary policy decision whose consequences required complementary measures to cushion its impact, expand social intervention and strengthen productive sectors of the economy.
This is as he added that the real test of leadership was not the “ability to promise immediate relief for electoral advantage but the courage to take difficult decisions.”