***As Tinubu explains why Supreme Court can’t admit Atiku’s CSU evidence
• Dare faults ADC candidate over ‘Bola’ reference to President
• Says Tinubu remains focused on reforms, raises Mambilla questions
The Presidency on Saturday knocked back economic proposals by the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
It asked him to take the proposals to Nigerians on his campaign trail rather than seeking to dictate how President Bola Tinubu should govern the country.
Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communication, Dr Sunday Dare, in a statement on his X handle @SundayDareSD also faulted the former Vice President for repeatedly referring to the President simply as “Bola” during his Friday press briefing in Abuja.
Dare dismissed Atiku’s intervention as unsolicited homework.
The ADC candidate, he said, 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, saying the experience of petrol subsidy removal should not be repeated in the power sector.
But Dare rejected Atiku’s approach, saying opposition politics does not confer on a presidential candidate the authority to issue directives to an incumbent president.
He said: “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.”
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 and the zoning conundrum
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.
The tribunal detailed the confession of the promoter of Sunrise Leno Adesanya that he transferred $500,000 to Jennifer Douglas, former wife of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar in 2003, a few months before the purported award of the phantom contract to his company.
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 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.
