Atiku, Presidency trade words over Tinubu’s policies

The Presidency yesterday hit back at former vice president Atiku Abubakar, who flayed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration for allegedly indulging in “trial-and-error economic policies,” saying he would have acted differently if given the mandate. Atiku, who contested the 2023 presidential election on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) but lost to Tinubu, […]

The Presidency yesterday hit back at former vice president Atiku Abubakar, who flayed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration for allegedly indulging in “trial-and-error economic policies,” saying he would have acted differently if given the mandate.

Atiku, who contested the 2023 presidential election on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) but lost to Tinubu, said yesterday that the current administration is undertaking a “palliative economy”, something his administration would not have done.

Atiku said unleashing reforms to determine an appropriate exchange rate, cost-reflective electricity tariff, and petrol price at one and the same time “is certainly an overkill”.

The opposition leader noted that while he had advocated for subsidy removal, his administration would have gone for a gradual removal as was done in other countries like Malaysia (2022) and Indonesia (2022 -2023).

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The former vice president said his journey of reforms would have benefited from more adequate preparations, more sufficient diagnostic assessment of the country’s conditions, more consultations with key stakeholders and better ideas for the final destination.

He also said his administration would have launched an economic stimulus fund (ESF), with an initial investment capacity of approximately $10 billion to support MSMEs across all economic sectors.

“We would have been guided by my robust reform agenda as encapsulated in ‘My Covenant with Nigerians’, my policy document that sought to, among others, protect our fragile economy against much deeper crisis by preventing business collapse; our document had spelt out policies that were consistent and coherent.

“We would have been more strategic in our response to reform fallout. We would not over-estimate the efficacy of the reform measures or underestimate the potential costs of reforms,” Atiku said.

But reacting, the Special Adviser to President Tinubu on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, said if he had won the election, Atiku would have plunged Nigeria into a worse situation or run a regime of cronyism.

He also said there was no need for Atiku to speak because his ideas, “which lacked details” were rejected by Nigerians in the 2023 poll.

“Abubakar lost the election partly because he vowed to sell the NNPC and other assets to his friends. Nigerians have not forgotten this, nor would they be comforted by Atiku’s antecedents when he ran the economy in the first term of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government between 1999 and 2003.

“As vice president, Atiku supervised a questionable privatisation programme. He and his boss demonstrated a lack of faith in our educational system, and both went to establish their universities while they allowed ours to flounder.

“Talk is cheap. It is easy to pontificate and deride a rival’s programmes even when there are irrefutable indices that the economic reforms yield positives despite the temporary difficulties,” the Presidency said.