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Paul Ibe, spokesman of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, has said Nigerians should prefer a leader who is willing to reconsider a policy after seeing its impact, rather than one who insists on it despite worsening hardship.
In a Friday post on Facebook titled, “Between Atiku’s leadership and Tinubu’s heartlessness,” Ibe defended his principal’s decision to rethink his 2023 position on petrol subsidy removal and accused President Tinubu’s administration of insensitivity to citizens’ suffering.
Ibe said Atiku should not be attacked for reconsidering a policy position he supported during the 2023 campaign.
“Yes, Atiku supported removing petrol subsidy during the 2023 campaign. That fact should not be hidden. But changing one’s position after seeing the consequences of a particular implementation is not automatically hypocrisy,” he stated.
He argued that responsible leaders must be prepared to “rethink, restructure or even reverse a policy when its implementation is inflicting severe hardship on the people he seeks to govern.”
Ibe referenced World Bank reports to support his position, stating that the bank acknowledged that subsidy removal and related reforms “intensified pressures on households, with the removal initially contributing to sharply higher petrol prices and inflation.”
He further noted that the World Bank estimates “another 7 million Nigerians fell into poverty in 2025, bringing the estimated share living below the national poverty line to 63%.”
According to him, the bank also reported in October 2025 that poor households spend “as much as 70% of their income on food,” and that despite macroeconomic improvements, “poverty and food insecurity remained high.”
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“So, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu argument cannot simply be: Atiku supported subsidy removal in 2023, therefore he must support it forever. Public policy does not work that way,” Ibe said, adding that “when the human cost of a policy becomes intolerable such as Nigerians are currently experiencing under Tinubu, stubbornness is not leadership.”
Ibe drew a distinction between acknowledging that the old subsidy regime was “expensive, opaque and vulnerable to abuse” and the way the removal was implemented.
He said even the World Bank, which supported the reform, “repeatedly stressed the necessity of compensating vulnerable Nigerians and strengthening social protection because higher petrol prices could push households deeper into poverty.”
“President Tinubu and those around him may be insulated from the daily consequences of these policies, but millions of Nigerians are not,” he added.
Ibe said the Atiku Economic Recovery Plan (AERP) would address the fallout by lowering domestic refining costs, which he said would reduce petrol and diesel prices, transportation and logistics costs, and enable farmers and manufacturers to spend less.
“Ultimately, the Atiku plan will jumpstart the economy laid prostrate by Tinubu’s ‘Bole Kaja’ policies that has impoverished and dehumanised Nigerians!” he stated.
“Policies are made for people. People are not made to suffer indefinitely for policies. When a policy is hurting the population it was supposed to serve, compassionate leadership demands the courage to rethink it,” Ibe stressed.
