By Danladi Ahmed
The Democratic Front (TDF) has described the latest attack by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on the President Bola Tinubu administration as a national embarrassment in content and context.
In a statement signed by its Chairman, Mallam Danjuma Muhammad and Secretary, Chief Wale Adedayo, the group decried Atiku’s choice of words and wondered when he would begin to act the part of a supposed elder statesman that he should be in the public space.
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The statement read, “We are not surprised that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar accused President Bola Tinubu and his administration of what he described as ‘haphazard and disingenuous management of the Petroleum subsidy regime’ in the aftermath of the new pump price of fuel but we decry his descent to crass disembling and deliberate use of pedestrian and cheap political trickery.
“As a former Vice President, we expect him to know better than most people that the law governing the oil sector in Nigeria, the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) strictly prevents government from interfering with or determining the pricing of Petroleum products.
“Atiku’s latest gibberish against the government of President Bola Tinubu is not different from his previous untenable economic prognosis, which has always proved to be incoherent.
“Like many Nigerians, we wonder what aspect of the petroleum subsidy regime is affected by Tinubu’s ‘haphazard and disingenuous approach’ as he wrongly claimed.
“Is this not the same man that backed an economic policy introduced Argentina President Javier Milei, who himself described it as shock therapy and recommended it for Nigeria at a time when the Tinubu administration was taking measured steps? Today, we have seen how wrong he was on the Argentina model.
“It should be understood that the current increase in the pump price of fuel was prompted by prevailing market conditions following NNPCL’s inability to continue to be the sole off taker of fuel from the Dangote refinery.
“Neither the federal government nor NNPCL could dictate the fuel price against the reality of market dynamics.
“We have no doubt that Atiku is aware of the provisions of the PIA, but he chose to exhibit an unconscionable aspect of his post-election emotional pains in the public space by unjustifiably castigating the government.
“We believe that this emotional deflation directly accounts for the consistent lallation and jabbering he dishes out on the reform policies of the Tinubu administration.
“Our position is informed by the fact that Atiku Abubakar was the Vice President of the administration that initiated the first draft of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), which was eventually transmitted to the National Assembly in 2008. In addition, he was the champion of economic deregulation in the Obasanjo democratic regime of 1999-2007.
“It is also relevant to recall that the deregulation and privatization of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry was perhaps one of the most topical economic discussions at the time he was Vice President and head of the privatization programme when fuel prices went up multiple times inspite of fuel subsidy.”
TDF noted that, as Vice President, Atiku presided over a privatisation exercise that could be described as haphazard.
“It is public knowledge that it was within that period that the government embarked on a process led to several government owned enterprises being sold off at a pittance to families and friends of the administration on Atiku’s watch.
“We wonder what could be more haphazard and disingenuous as that?
“His appointment as Chairman of the National Council on Privatization (NCP) is still seen as one of the most costly and catastrophic economic decisions as NCP under his leadership has the record of conducting the most questionable privatization exercise in the country’s history.
“Let us also put it on record that the archives of the Nigerian media are replete with Atiku Abubakar’s campaign slogans and promises to withdraw petroleum subsidy, deregulate the downstream sector of the oil industry, float the national currency, unify interest rates and also ‘sell’ off NNPC as it was known at the time.
“Unfortunately, the former Vice President now sees everything wrong with many of these free-market economic policies under the current Tinubu reforms, due to his emotional vulnerability as a result of his serial failure to win that which he had since the 1990s longed for.
“We therefore urge Nigerians to ignore Atiku’s personal feelings of inadequacies and inner turmoil over the policies of the Tinubu administration,” it added.
TDF, however, expressed its confidence and faith in the ongoing economic reforms of the present administration and restated its conviction in the ability of President Tinubu to put the economy on firm footing
