The Director General of the All Progressives Congress 2027 Presidential Campaign Council, Senator Abdulaziz Yari, has dismissed the possibility of restoring petrol subsidy, warning Nigerians not to believe politicians promising to reverse the policy.
Yari described the subsidy regime as financially unsustainable and opaque, arguing that returning to it would further compound the country’s economic challenges.
The former Zamfara State governor spoke when members of the APC National Working Committee visited him, reacting to a campaign promise by the African Democratic Congress presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, to introduce a targeted subsidy arrangement if elected in 2027.
Atiku, a former Vice President, has criticised the impact of subsidy removal on Nigerians and questioned the utilisation of funds said to have been saved from the policy. He has proposed an alternative mechanism to reduce the burden of rising petrol prices on citizens.
However, Yari argued that the subsidy system had operated without sufficient transparency and accurate data on the country’s actual fuel consumption.
He recalled that the 2023 Appropriation Act passed by the National Assembly before President Bola Tinubu assumed office contained no provision for petrol subsidy.
“Before Asiwaju came in in 2023, there was no budget for subsidy. National Assembly passed the budget in March, but there was no provision for subsidy in 2023 budget,” Yari said.
He challenged politicians promising to restore the policy to explain how such a commitment would be financed, warning that Nigerians were being misled by such assurances.
“Anybody who is deceiving Nigerians, saying I’m going to bring this thing back, he’s lying to himself, he is lying internally, he’s lying eternally, he’s lying to Nigerians,” he stated.
Yari also questioned the huge sums previously associated with petrol subsidy, saying the government had not been able to establish with certainty the quantity of petrol consumed daily in the country.
“This is about N20 trillion deal for a year, going to where we don’t know. Nobody can tell you exactly how much litres we need, what are the quantities per day,” he said.
The APC campaign council chairman recalled that, during his tenure as chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, the governors repeatedly demanded accurate fuel consumption figures from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.
“As chairman governors forum, we challenged NNPC for four years to tell us the exact consumption,” he said.
According to him, the explanations eventually offered by the oil company were unsatisfactory, with officials at one point claiming that Nigeria was effectively subsidising fuel consumed in other West African countries.
“When at the end of the day, we push harder, they said no, ‘we are doing subsidy for West Africa,’” Yari added.
The disagreement over subsidy policy has emerged as one of the major economic issues likely to shape the 2027 presidential election, with opposition politicians criticising the hardship attributed to the removal of the subsidy.
The Tinubu administration, however, has maintained that eliminating the subsidy was necessary to end what it considers wasteful spending and redirect public resources towards development.
Yari said the APC would base its 2027 campaign on the administration’s record rather than personal attacks against its opponents.
“We are on the right path. By God’s grace, we have the data. This is what we are going to do in our campaign – facts and figures,” he said.
He said the party would highlight what the administration had accomplished, its ongoing programmes and its plans for the future without dwelling on the personalities of its political opponents.
“What we have done, what we achieved, and what we intend to do in the future. We don’t call any names. Names are not important to us, but rather what we’re going to do for Nigerians and what we’ve been doing for the past three and a half years,” Yari stated.
The former governor expressed confidence that Tinubu would secure another term in office, describing the President as the preferred choice of the APC for the 2027 election.
“Bola Ahmed Tinubu is doing his best, and we believe he’s the right man for this job again,” Yari added.
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