Atiku Abubakar renewed his pledge this week to reinstate a form of fuel subsidy if he wins Nigeria’s 2027 presidential election, as petrol prices climbed to roughly ₦1,400 per litre in Lagos and Abuja and as high as ₦1,500 in parts of the north. Diesel has passed ₦2,000 per litre.
The African Democratic Congress candidate has framed his proposal not as a restoration of the pre-2023 arrangement, under which government paid importers the gap between landing cost and the controlled pump price, but as what his aides describe as a production subsidy “located in the barrel.” Under that model, domestic crude would go to Nigerian refineries at a reduced price, with the savings passed to consumers through cheaper petroleum products.
“On the question of subsidy, my position has not changed and will not change: I will restore it!” Atiku said, a line he has repeated in various forms since late August as criticism of the idea has mounted.
The Eastern Update has learned that Atiku’s team has pressed a parallel argument alongside the subsidy pledge: that the roughly ₦15.8 trillion in federation savings the government says subsidy removal generated between June 2023 and December 2025 has not been transparently accounted for. His campaign wants anyone found to have diverted subsidy-era funds to return the money, and has said it would demand the same accounting of the current savings figure if elected.
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The price pressure is notable given that the Dangote refinery, Africa’s largest single-train facility, is running at full capacity. Its output has not insulated Nigerian pump prices from swings in global crude costs, since the refinery still buys crude and sells refined products at prices that track international benchmarks rather than a fixed domestic rate.
A second opposition coalition has staked out similar ground. Rabiu Kwankwaso, the Nigeria Democratic Congress’s vice-presidential candidate running alongside Peter Obi, said Tuesday that a future NDC government would bring back subsidy “in a different form,” pointing to state investment in refining capacity and expanded domestic production as the mechanism rather than direct import payments.
The governing All Progressives Congress has rejected both proposals and defended the current pricing regime. “Petrol is now available and I can tell you it is affordable,” said Ibrahim Bala, the party’s publicity director, arguing that Nigerian pump prices remain lower than in the United Kingdom or the United States even after this year’s increases. President Bola Tinubu has gone further, describing Atiku’s plan as showing “serious ignorance of governance and economy” and noting that several states could not cover salaries and pensions before subsidy removal freed up federal allocations.
Tinubu’s rejection of a subsidy return is occurring alongside a separate dispute over his own whereabouts. The president left Nigeria on August 30 for what his office described as a three-week vacation. Atiku has asked whether Tinubu transmitted the written declaration to the Senate President and Speaker required under Section 145 of the constitution before departing, a document that would formally empower Vice President Kashim Shettima to act in his absence. Atiku’s camp says no such letter has been made public and has called on the presidency to publish it if one exists.
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The constitutional text is specific: a president proceeding on vacation “shall transmit” a written declaration to the National Assembly leadership, after which the vice-president exercises presidential functions. If no declaration is transmitted within 21 days, the National Assembly can act by simple majority in each chamber to confer those powers on the vice-president instead. Nigeria has faced comparable overlaps before without a declared vacancy — in 2022, President Muhammadu Buhari and then-Vice President Yemi Osinbajo were abroad simultaneously, and current officials have cited that precedent in dismissing claims of a leadership vacuum this time.
Neither the presidency nor the National Assembly had published confirmation of a Section 145 letter as of Wednesday. Finance Minister Taiwo Oyedele had separately confirmed the N15.8 trillion federation savings figure, attributing part of the increase to higher naira-denominated revenue following foreign exchange reforms rather than to production growth alone.
Petrol subsidy, removed on Tinubu’s inauguration day in May 2023, remains the clearest fault line in the campaign now taking shape for 2027, with three of the president’s rivals converging on some version of its return even as his government holds to full removal as settled policy.
