Abdulaziz Yari, senator representing Zamfara west and director-general of the All Progressives Congress (APC) 2027 presidential campaign council, says anyone promising to restore fuel subsidy is deceiving Nigerians.
Yari, a former Zamfara governor, spoke on Saturday when members of the APC national working committee (NWC) paid him a courtesy visit.
He was reacting to Atiku Abubakar’s pledge to restore petrol subsidy if elected president in 2027.
Atiku, presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), has said he would introduce a targeted subsidy, arguing that the government has failed to account for savings from the removal of the policy.
‘SUBSIDY RETURN IS IMPOSSIBLE’
Yari said there was no provision for petrol subsidy in the 2023 budget passed by the national assembly before President Bola Tinubu assumed office.
“Before Asiwaju came in in 2023, there was no budget for subsidy,” Yari said.
“National Assembly passed the budget in March, but there was no provision for subsidy in 2023 budget. How is it going to run? Definitely, whoever is there, the first thing he is going to do he will hands up.
“And 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.”
The APC campaign council DG also questioned the amount previously spent on petrol subsidy and the lack of clarity over Nigeria’s actual daily fuel consumption.
“This is about N20 trillion deal for a year, going to where we don’t know. Nobody can tell you, no one can tell you exactly how much litres we need, what are the quantities per day,” he said.
Yari said that as chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, governors repeatedly challenged the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) to provide accurate consumption figures.
“As chairman governors forum, we challenged NNPC for four years to tell us the exact consumption,” he said.
“They will propagate the numbers and say it, and we are paying the numbers. When at the end of the day, we push harder, they said no, ‘we are doing subsidy for West Africa.’”
Yari said the APC would base its 2027 campaign on the administration’s achievements and plans rather than attacking political 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.
“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.
“Bola Ahmed Tinubu is doing his best, and we believe he’s the right man for this job again.”