APC challenges Atiku to prove “Contesting against thieves” claim
Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has challenged former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar to provide evidence in court to substantiate his claim that “thieves” are responsible for the country’s political and economic problems.
The party was reacting to remarks attributed to Atiku, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) for the 2027 general elections, in which he described the contest as a race against thieves.
According to Daily Trust, Atiku made the remarks in a video posted on his social media handles on Tuesday night while addressing supporters at his residence in Abuja.
“We are competing with thieves. They stole the election. Now, they have stolen the economy. They have stolen everything,” Atiku said in the video seen by WatchmanPost on Wednesday.
Responding to the development, the APC Director of Publicity, Bala Ibrahim, urged Atiku to seek legal redress if he had evidence to support his allegations.
Speaking with a Daily Trust correspondent, Ibrahim questioned whether Atiku had lost confidence in the judiciary.
“As a former vice president of the country and as someone who has contested elections and lost before, I don’t know if Atiku is passing a vote of no confidence on the judiciary. If he is, then he has no business contesting again.
“But if he has confidence in the judiciary and he is making these allegations, I think he knows the right place to go to prove his point. He should go to court and present facts to support his claims that he is competing against thieves. It is for the court to take a decision and those thieves will certainly be made to have their day in court,” he said.
Meanwhile, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has criticised Atiku’s proposal to restore fuel subsidy if elected president in 2027, describing the promise as a political response to economic hardship rather than a sustainable solution to Nigeria’s fiscal challenges.
NANS President, Akinteye Babatunde, said in a statement on Wednesday that returning to the old subsidy system without a clear structural framework would recreate the problems that made the policy unsustainable.
“Every sane and patriotic citizen who is conversant with our nation’s economy will agree with me that the removal of the fuel subsidy was a difficult but necessary economic reform aimed at ending an increasingly unsustainable system that consumed trillions of naira, benefited higher fuel consumers disproportionately, encouraged smuggling, and constrained the government’s ability to invest in critical sectors,” he said.
The student leader stressed that the real test of the reform was not simply the amount of money saved but how the government deployed the resources.
“However, the real measure of the reform should not be the savings alone, but what the government does with those savings,” he said.
“Clearly, we have seen the government increase state subventions and redirect resources into education, healthcare, infrastructure and agriculture. Realistically, the Nigerian people have made a productive sacrifice that must ultimately translate into a stronger and more sustainable economy.”
He added: “This is why calls or promises for the outright return of subsidy, without a clear structural framework for addressing the fundamental weaknesses that made the policy unsustainable in the first place, amount to little more than a political response to a genuine economic challenge.”
