Former Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) president and sitting senator, Adams Oshiomhole, has taken aim at former Vice President Atiku Abubakar over his campaign pledge to reinstate fuel subsidy if he wins the 2027 presidential election, accusing him of contradicting positions he held while in office.
Speaking in a Tuesday interview with TVC, the former Edo State governor said Atiku personally defended the removal of petroleum subsidy to him years ago, when Oshiomhole led the NLC and Atiku served as vice president.
“Atiku Abubakar himself, in his quiet moment, will laugh at himself. Don’t forget, I was the president of the NLC, and as vice president, Atiku lectured me about the waste of petroleum subsidy and why it is necessary to remove it, except that I disagree with them,” Oshiomhole said.
The senator didn’t stop there, resurfacing Atiku’s 2023 campaign promise to privatise the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) — a pledge he says sits awkwardly beside the new subsidy-restoration agenda.
“Remember, Atiku is on record, just in 2023, as saying that he will privatise NNPC. You don’t have that tape? He even added that even if they kill him. I don’t know why he needs to die because he wants to privatise NNPC,” Oshiomhole said.
He further questioned the logic of pursuing both privatisation and price control simultaneously, asking how government could hand NNPC to private owners while still dictating how they price their products.
“So can you privatise something in private hands, and yet dictate to the new owner how to sell the product that he produces?” he asked.
Atiku, who ran as the Africa Democratic Congress’s presidential candidate, has pitched subsidy restoration as a cost-of-living intervention, arguing it would make petroleum products more affordable for Nigerians ahead of the 2027 polls.
But Oshiomhole insists the former vice president’s past record undercuts the credibility of that promise, framing it as a reversal of principles Atiku once defended in government.
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