By Luminous Jannamike
ABUJA – The African Democratic Congress, ADC, yesterday fired back at the Presidency over its rejection of the party’s presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s, proposal to bring petrol prices down to about ₦600 per litre through a controlled domestic-refining subsidy.
According to the ADC, the argument goes beyond the Presidency’s N19.1 trillion price tag, stating that Nigerians are already paying heavily for expensive fuel through higher transport fares, food prices, production costs, and the rising cost of living.
In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the party accused the Presidency of building its case around a hypothetical $40-per-barrel subsidy and attacking the figure it produced.
“We are at a loss as to how the presidency conjured up this phantom figure. But we do not agree with it,” Abdullahi said.
According to the ADC, Atiku’s proposal is not a return to the old subsidy regime but a controlled production incentive for Nigerian refineries, with a fiscal ceiling and mechanisms to track crude from refinery intake to finished products.
“What the Presidency is attacking therefore is the old subsidy regime that Atiku is seeking to replace, not Atiku’s plan,” the party said.
The party also challenged the government to explain its own petroleum-related spending, citing NNPC’s audited 2024 accounts and broader petroleum-related exposure reported at about N17.5 trillion, while stressing that the figures should not be mistaken for conventional petrol subsidy.
Abdullahi pointed to the government’s offshore oil production incentives, which can reach $11.50 per barrel, and questioned why incentives for oil investors were defensible while an intervention designed to make fuel cheaper for Nigerians was condemned.
“If Nigeria can provide a production-linked fiscal incentive of up to $11.50 per barrel to stimulate offshore oil production, why is a carefully controlled crude-input incentive for domestic refineries dismissed as economic madness when its objective is to make fuel cheaper for Nigerians and build domestic refining capacity?” Abdullahi asked.
ADC said the Presidency’s ₦19.1 trillion calculation also ignored potential foreign-exchange savings and wider economic gains from domestic refining, including reduced petroleum imports, lower production costs and refined-product exports.
It further faulted the government for failing to calculate the cost of maintaining high fuel prices.“Doing nothing is not free. It is ultimately more expensive,” the party declared.
Turning the Presidency’s ‘where will the money come from?’ argument around, ADC asked where Nigeria’s money was currently going, what public value it was producing and what the opportunity cost was.
“This government does intervene; they only choose where to intervene, and on whose behalf,” Abdullahi said.
The party said the real debate was what Nigeria should subsidise, why it should do so and who should benefit, insisting that its proposal was a capped, audited and traceable production-support regime aimed at making fuel cheaper while strengthening domestic refining.
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