The Presidency on Saturday told the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to take his economic proposals to Nigerians on the campaign trail rather than attempt to dictate how President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should govern the country.
Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communication, Dr Sunday Dare, who made the assertion, also faulted the former Vice President for repeatedly referring to the President simply as ‘Bola’ during his press briefing in Abuja on Friday.
Dare, in a reaction posted on his verified X handle, @SundayDareSD, described Atiku’s intervention as ‘unsolicited homework’, arguing that the ADC candidate should concentrate on selling his programmes to the electorate ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
Atiku had on Friday called on President Tinubu to take immediate measures to reduce petrol prices and ease the cost-of-living pressure on Nigerians, arguing that high energy costs had filtered through transportation, food, production and other household expenses.
The former Vice President also warned against the planned phase-out of electricity subsidies, arguing that the experience of petrol subsidy removal should not be repeated in the power sector.
But Dare rejected Atiku’s approach, saying opposition politics did not confer on a presidential candidate the authority to issue directives to an incumbent President.
‘Alhaji Atiku Abubakar convened a press conference in Abuja and chose, once again, to address the President of the Federal Republic as ‘Bola.’ He issued instructions. He dictated a truncated timetable. He presumed to tell a sitting President how governance should be run in the last months of a mandate already given by the Nigerian people.
‘That is not opposition. It is insolence’, Dare said.
According to the presidential aide, Atiku should channel his policy propositions towards persuading voters rather than presenting them as instructions to the Tinubu administration.
‘It is election season. If Alhaji Atiku has a message for Nigerians, the proper place for it is the campaign trail, not a briefing room from which he talks down to the Head of State’, he said.
Dare also defended the administration’s economic reforms, arguing that President Tinubu was undertaking difficult structural changes necessitated by longstanding weaknesses in the economy.
‘President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is doing the heavy, foundational lifting required to restructure an economy crippled by decades of structural inertia and subsidy haemorrhaging. That work is difficult. It is also necessary.
‘Transient discomfort does not cancel the duty of reform, and it does not confer on any defeated candidate the right to issue decrees from the sidelines’, he said.
The presidential aide further challenged Atiku’s criticism of the administration’s fiscal policies and his proposed government intervention in petrol pricing, describing the ADC candidate’s position as politically motivated.
Atiku had proposed what he called a transparent ‘production subsidy’ for petroleum products refined locally and sold to Nigerians, saying such support should have a fixed spending limit, National Assembly approval and independent auditing.
Dare, however, questioned the former Vice President’s record, particularly his role in the privatisation programme during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
‘Atiku’s sudden conversion to the gospel of interventionism rings hollow’, Dare said, accusing him of seeking to capitalise politically on current economic difficulties.
‘A man who once supervised a controversial season of privatisation now presents himself as the apostle of relief. The country has heard this sermon before. It has also seen the record’, he added.
Dare also brought the controversy surrounding the Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project into the exchange, saying Atiku should address questions arising from the long-running dispute before seeking to lecture the administration on economic management.
‘The Mambilla matter is not a rumour invented by the internet. It is a public controversy that requires candour, not diversion. A politician who wants moral authority cannot wave away the past with a petrol-price talking point and expect the nation to salute’, he said.
The Mambilla dispute returned to public attention after an International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) arbitration tribunal in Paris on September 17 ruled in Nigeria’s favour in proceedings brought by Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Limited.
Sunrise had demanded $680 million as settlement and interest in connection with another arbitration in which it was seeking more than $2.7 billion in compensation and interest over disputes associated with the 3,960-megawatt Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project in Taraba State.
The tribunal also ordered Sunrise and its promoter, Leno Adesanya, to reimburse Nigeria about $11.8 million in legal fees incurred in defending the arbitration.
Dare maintained that Atiku should address issues concerning his past rather than use the economic situation to attack the administration.
‘Until those questions are answered, his grandstanding remains what it truly is; empty noise from a desperate politician whose time has long since passed.
‘Let him save his unsolicited blueprints for a mirror. Nigeria has looked past the Mambilla mirage, and it will not return to the Egypt of calculated economic pillaging’, he said.
Returning to Atiku’s manner of addressing the President, Dare said political rivalry should not eliminate respect for the office of the President.
‘Alhaji Atiku should go and campaign. If he has something to tell Nigerians, let him tell them as a candidate, not as an unappointed tutor to Mr President. Courtesy is not weakness. It is the minimum a republic asks of those who still seek its highest office’, he said.
The presidential aide said the administration would remain focused on governance despite the intensifying political contest ahead of the 2027 election.
‘Nigeria is being governed. The election will come in its season. Between now and then, the work of the President will continue, undistracted by first-name familiarity, unsolicited homework, and the restless theatre of a man who has not yet made peace with yesterday’, Dare said.