African Democratic Congress presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar has said the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria’s call for government action to reduce petrol prices strengthens his argument for a targeted fuel intervention tied to domestic refining.
In a statement issued through his media aide Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said IPMAN’s position showed that participants in the downstream petroleum market recognized the need for deliberate policy action to reduce energy costs.
Atiku argued that his proposal was fundamentally different from the previous subsidy system built around imported petrol.
He said his model would link intervention to domestically refined products and focus on strengthening local refining capacity while reducing prices for consumers.
The former Vice President described the distinction as the difference between exporting raw material and then importing finished products at higher cost, and processing the same resource domestically.
He said Nigeria’s ownership of crude oil should make domestic refining a central part of any strategy to improve fuel affordability.
Atiku argued that expensive energy had wider consequences for transportation, food production, distribution and household purchasing power.
He therefore framed the proposed intervention as a cost-of-living policy rather than simply a petroleum-sector subsidy.
Atiku also invited IPMAN to participate in the design, implementation and monitoring of the policy if he wins the 2027 election.
He said petroleum marketers possessed practical knowledge of distribution bottlenecks, leakages and market distortions that could undermine policy implementation.
The ADC candidate also accused the Tinubu administration of preparing to soften its fuel-pricing stance as the election approaches.
That allegation is a political claim and was not supported by independent evidence in the supplied material.
Atiku said any late government intervention would amount to an election-season response after years of hardship.
The Tinubu administration has consistently defended subsidy removal as essential to fiscal sustainability and has argued that returning to a broad subsidy system would recreate the same financial pressures and leakages that led to the policy’s removal.
The emerging debate now centres on whether a narrower, production-linked intervention can lower fuel prices without recreating the fiscal burden of the previous regime.
