Atiku Abubakar has built his 2027 presidential bid, at least so far, around a single organizing idea: that much of what the Tinubu administration undid since May 2023 deserves to be undone again. In the space of a few weeks, the African Democratic Congress candidate has pledged to restore Nigeria’s fuel subsidy and to reopen the country’s land borders if elected.

Both promises speak directly to hardship Nigerians can feel in their transport fares and food prices. Both have also triggered a genuinely divided national response one that says as much about where Nigeria’s economic debate now stands as it does about Atiku himself.

The subsidy pledge and its walk-back problem

Atiku’s fuel subsidy promise is the more combustible of the two. Speaking during a Facebook Live session, he told Nigerians plainly that if elected he would restore the subsidy, framing it around an unanswered question: if removal was supposed to free up funds for healthcare, education and security, where has that money actually gone? It is a notable reversal Atiku did not initially oppose subsidy removal, and like Tinubu and Peter Obi, campaigned on some version of reform in 2023.

The trouble is that “restoring subsidy” already has a settled meaning in Nigerian policy debate, one associated with fiscal drain, smuggling, opaque payments and elite capture and Atiku’s own team has struggled to say clearly which version he means. After the initial backlash, his campaign began describing the plan as a targeted, gradual intervention rather than a return to the old blanket regime, and his media aide Paul Ibe suggested it would be temporary, phased out as the economy recovered.

Atiku publicly disowned that explanation, insisting the restoration was his own settled position and that Ibe had spoken without authorization a contradiction that has done little to settle what Nigerians are actually being promised.

Reactions split along familiar and unfamiliar lines

The Presidency’s response was blunt. Special Adviser Sunday Dare accused Atiku of drenching the pledge in hypocrisy and deceit, calling it a manipulation of public sentiment for electoral gain, while presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga argued that inflation is easing and investment returning precisely because the reforms Atiku now disowns were carried through.

APC national chairman Nentawe Yilwatda called it a troubling reversal that raises doubts about the opposition’s readiness to govern.What is more striking is the criticism arriving from outside the ruling party.

Former Kaduna Central senator Shehu Sani, no ally of Tinubu’s, dismissed the pledge as deception, pointing to the N3-4 trillion Nigeria spent on subsidies before removal and arguing the funds mostly benefited corrupt actors rather than ordinary citizens.

The National Association of Nigerian Students went further, rejecting the plan outright and describing subsidy removal as a painful but productive sacrifice that should not be reversed without a credible structural alternative a position that suggests skepticism of Atiku’s promise is not confined to government loyalists.

Ordinary Nigerians reacting online have been similarly split. Some have expressed real hope that the promise signals a leader willing to admit government policy has failed the poor, with commentary invoking the Catholic Bishops’ Conference criticism of Tinubu’s economic approach. Others, including users who called Atiku’s credibility into question after a separate remark about political opponents, argued that Nigeria’s fiscal realities a devalued naira, a higher minimum wage bill make some campaign promises simply unaffordable regardless of who makes them.

The border pledge: less heat, similar skepticism

Atiku’s promise to reopen Nigeria’s land borders has generated less controversy but a sharper factual dispute. He argues that border closures dating to the 2019 shutdown and more recent restrictions tied to regional instability devastated cross-border trade with Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin Republic, pushing traders into bankruptcy and worsening unemployment and insecurity in the North. He has paired the pledge with a promise to develop southern ports, arguing this would cut the time needed to move goods from Lagos to the North-East from months to about a day.

The Presidency’s rebuttal here is more straightforwardly factual than its subsidy response: Sunday Dare noted that the federal government reopened most land borders on 14 March 2024 and has not reversed that decision, with Tinubu personally opening the Kamba border in Kebbi State in February 2026. Dare said it was difficult to understand which borders Atiku intends to open when most are already open a rebuttal that, if accurate, undercuts the pledge’s premise more than its economic logic.

What the split reveals
Taken together, the two pledges and the reaction to them suggest Nigeria’s 2027 campaign is going to be fought less over whether the country is hurting nobody disputes that and more over who gets believed when they promise relief. Atiku’s subsidy reversal has forced Tinubu’s rivals, including Peter Obi, to state their own positions more precisely; Obi has reaffirmed his support for subsidy removal while criticizing the government’s use of the savings.

The genuine ideological argument sitting underneath the political noise is one worth taking seriously regardless of one’s view of Atiku’s candidacy: whether Nigeria’s economic reforms since 2023 have been necessary but painful, or damaging enough to warrant partial reversal, remains a live and unresolved question for millions of Nigerians who have yet to see the promised relief materialize.

Mustapha Bature Sallama
Medical/Science communicator, Private Investigator, Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Analysis,United States Institute of Peace (USIP), [email protected] +233555275880

Sources
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