The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has condemned former Vice President and African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar for his plan to restore the fuel subsidy if elected president in 2027.

Mr Abubakar, in an interview with journalists on Wednesday, vowed to restore the fuel subsidy regime, claiming that money saved from its removal by President Bola Tinubu has been “stolen”.

The ADC presidential candidate noted that although he does not oppose subsidy removal, the money saved from the policy was stolen and not reinvested to improve citizens’ lives.

“I didn’t oppose the removal of subsidy. But where is the money? The money gotten should have been used to tackle poverty, out-of-school children and other things,” Mr Abubakar noted.

Speaking on Thursday during an inspection of ongoing infrastructure projects in Abuja, Mr Wike described Mr Abubakar as a voodoo economist, accusing him of inconsistency.

“Now, in 2026, he is not going to remove the fuel subsidy. Is he going back to the fraud, which he had alleged that fuel subsidy was? Atiku, who is confused, who acts like a voodoo economist, Atiku will say anything just to be president,” the minister said.

Mr Wike, who recalled that Mr Abubakar had said in 2022 that he would remove fuel subsidy within his first 100 days in office if elected, added, “Leadership is not you coming out, you say one thing now in the morning, in the afternoon you say a different thing, in the night you are talking of a different thing. That is not it.”

According to the minister, the current structure of Nigeria’s petroleum industry also raised questions about how a future administration would implement a fuel subsidy regime, particularly with the commercialisation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and the emergence of the Dangote Refinery.

Mr Wike said, “He (Atiku) is living in the past. If not, he will know that with the Petroleum Industry Act, NNPC is now fully commercialised. It has transformed the old NNPC into a limited liability company (NNPC Limited), and no longer the sole importer or producer of fuel. 

“Will Atiku, as president (Which he never will be), pay subsidy on fuel produced by Dangote Refinery? It also shows that he is confused, having insisted in the past that he will remove subsidy, which he described as a fraud. Does it now mean that he will restore what he said was a fraud?

He argued that restoring subsidy would contradict the Petroleum Industry Act, which he said was enacted to transform Nigeria’s midstream and downstream petroleum industry into a commercially driven, competitive market based on market pricing. 

“Reintroducing government-controlled fuel prices would reverse this policy direction, create regulatory uncertainty and weaken investor confidence in the sector.

“It will also recreate the distortions Nigeria has spent years trying to eliminate. Experience has shown that fuel subsidies encourage smuggling, arbitrage, inefficiency and opaque fiscal practices, while reducing revenues available to the Federation Account. Rather than benefiting only Nigerians, artificially low domestic prices often subsidise fuel consumption beyond Nigeria’s borders,” Mr Wike noted.

The minister defended President Bola Tinubu’s subsidy removal policy, arguing that the savings had increased allocations to the different tiers of government.

“Nobody talks about non-payment of pension; nobody talks about non-payment of salary. Before, for you to pay salary, you would beg and beg the banks to give you money. But all those things are things of the past,” Mr Wike said.