FORMER Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has accused the administration of President Bola Tinubu of plunging Nigeria into deeper poverty since assuming office in 2023, arguing that Nigerians can barely afford to live despite the government’s claim that the economy is entering an era of prosperity.
Atiku made the allegation while addressing a state-of-the-nation broadcast at the ADC Secretariat in Abuja on Thursday, as Nigeria marked its 66th Independence Day Anniversary.
He criticised the administration over rising insecurity, the cost of living and what he described as a widening gap between government claims of economic progress and the realities confronting Nigerians.
News Point Nigeria reports that Atiku’s address came shortly after President Tinubu, in his Independence Day broadcast, said the government’s economic reforms were beginning to translate into “prosperity.” Atiku, however, said that at 66, the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration had taken Nigeria “deeper into poverty, far from the dreams of the founding fathers.”
The ADC presidential candidate nevertheless urged Nigerians not to despair, saying the 2027 election would provide an opportunity to elect a leader capable of driving the country towards prosperity.
He also demanded the immediate release of individuals he described as “unlawfully” detained, while appealing to voters to come out and exercise their franchise.
Atiku warned against what he described as propaganda that the ruling party had already written the results of the 2027 election, urging the electorate to turn out on election day and protect their votes.
See Full Text Of Atiku’s Speech Below:
BOLA TINUBU CALLS IT PROSPERITY BUT NIGERIANS CAN BARELY AFFORD TO LIVE
My fellow Nigerians,
Sixty-six years after independence, millions of Nigerians are fighting for things a free country should never put beyond their reach: food on the table, a wage that lasts the month, and a safe journey home. The past three years under Bola Tinubu have plunged Nigeria into the most severe cost of living crisis in our history. Families are not merely tightening their belts. They are skipping meals, delaying treatment and borrowing to survive until payday.
And what has this government asked of them? More patience. More sacrifice. More faith in figures they cannot eat. While Nigerians are lectured about hardship, those in power preside over brazen waste, corruption and a budget process that makes a mockery of fiscal discipline. The people are told there is no money to ease their pain, yet government always seems to find money for its own appetites.
Tinubu removed the fuel subsidy with one announcement and no credible protection in place for the families who would bear the shock. Petrol, transport and the cost of moving food rose. He promised that the savings would benefit Nigerians. Three years later, the pain has an address in every home. Bola, where is the benefit?
And beyond the market, our nation is bleeding. Armed groups have killed thousands and driven families from their communities. Farmers fear their fields. Parents fear for children in their classrooms. Families dread the call demanding ransom for someone they love. A government that cannot make life affordable and cannot protect life has failed the two tests that matter most to its people.
This is not the Nigeria our founders struggled to set free. But I will not ask you to surrender to despair.
Despair is not a strategy. We have a path to recovery, and we must take it.
Today, Bola Tinubu told us that the “emergency treatment is over” and the “age of prosperity” has begun. A President may announce a new chapter in a speech. He cannot announce food onto a family’s table or money into a worker’s pocket.
Bola, where is this prosperity?
Bola says inflation has fallen. A slower rise in prices does not restore what families have lost. He cites growth and rising exports. Nigerian businesses deserve credit for what they have achieved. But growth must improve lives. It cannot be a certificate of success that government awards itself while citizens struggle to survive.
Bola, you call Nigeria a patient with cancer. After three years of your treatment, why is it harder for Nigerians to buy food, pay for medicine or even get to work? Why does your government have more money while the people can afford less?
You say Nigerians must endure the pain because you are curing the disease. But when a patient cries out, a doctor listens. He does not call the patient “regressive” for asking when he will get better. He does not point to the hospital’s rising revenue and declare him healed. A patient who cannot afford to live is not proof that the treatment is working.
And you cannot speak as though you arrived from the moon in 2023. Your party had governed Nigeria for eight years. If the country was as sick as you say, tell Nigerians what responsibility your party bears for its condition.
Let us bring this argument down from the podium to the places where Nigerians make their daily choices: the filling station, the market stall and the breakfast table. In April 2023, a ₦30,000 minimum wage could buy about 118 litres of petrol. Today, a ₦70,000 minimum wage buys just 50 litres. The salary has more than doubled on paper; the petrol it can buy has fallen by more than half.
The average price of one egg rose from about ₦88 in April 2023 to ₦261 in May 2026. A sliced loaf was about ₦500 in April 2023; by May 2026, the average was about ₦2,000 for a smaller loaf. These may look like small items in a government report. In a family home, they are breakfast. They are the money left for a child’s lunch. If 2023 was the illness, why does your “cure” buy less fuel, fewer eggs and a smaller loaf of bread?
No mother struggling to feed her children is asking for “morphine.” No worker spending his wages on transport is addicted to subsidy. They are asking what happened to the savings you promised and when your reforms will bring down the cost of living.
My fellow Nigerians, I will not ask you to accept another promise without asking how it would work.
Working with my running mate and our partners in the African Democratic Congress, I will pursue a clear purpose: make life affordable again.
We will introduce a capped, budgeted production subsidy tied to verified fuel refined in Nigeria, including fuel from modular refineries. Imported petrol will not qualify. The benefit must reach consumers through lower pump prices. We will publish the costs, independently audit the payments and cut government waste to help fund the programme.
The principle is simple: produce here, refine here, create jobs here and pay less here. If Bola disagrees, he should answer the proposal on its merits. Calling relief an addiction will not lower the price of petrol.
Bola, your speech is full of “we will.” We will make farming cheaper. We will power factories. We will create jobs. We will bring down prices. You have been President for more than three years. Nigerians are entitled to ask what you have done with the time already given to you.
You say that when farmers produce more cheaply and manufacturers spend less on electricity, prices will fall. Of course they will. But farmers and manufacturers are telling you that they cannot produce cheaply now. A farmer who cannot safely reach his field cannot wait for your theory of cheaper food. A factory paying more to keep its machines running cannot wait for another promise of industrial growth.
You speak of young Nigerians building unicorns. I see their talent wherever I go. I see young people learning new skills, making things and looking for a chance to serve their country. They first need work that pays enough to get them through the month. Ambition is abundant in Nigeria. What is scarce is the chance to turn it into a living.
And please do not describe every new loan as an opportunity. A student loan does not make education affordable when fees are rising. Under your watch, some institutions have raised fees by more than 400 per cent, and your answer is to offer students loans to pay them. Consumer credit does not make a worker prosperous if repayment takes another bite out of a wage already too small to live on. Tell Nigerians what these programmes have delivered, who has benefited and what they must pay back.
The confusion extends to your budgets. You have just signed an extension keeping the 2025 budget in operation until the last day of 2026. The 2026 budget exists alongside it. Soon, your government will ask Nigerians to examine a 2027 budget. How many budgets must be open at once before you can tell the country what was funded, what was completed and what remains unpaid? A budget should be a timetable for delivery, not a ball passed from one year to the next.
Bola says his government reforms have a human face. Nigerians have spent three years looking for that face in the market, at the hospital and on the road to work. What they have found is deepening poverty, healthcare they cannot afford, school fees they struggle to pay, food beyond their reach and electricity bills that consume what little they earn. In communities under attack, people fear for their lives. A government cannot claim a human face while making it harder for Nigerians to eat, learn, seek treatment and stay alive.
Bola, let us name who has found opportunity in your “age of prosperity.” Hitech, a Chagoury Group company, received the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway contract without an open public tender. The Chagourys’ longstanding relationship with you is public knowledge, as are the reported business ties between your son Seyi and the family. Your government says it used restricted bidding. Then publish the invitations, the bids, the evaluations, the final contract and every variation. Let Nigerians see how this enormous award was decided.
Meanwhile, local contractors who completed government projects remain unpaid. Many borrowed from banks to do the work and now face demands for repayment on money the government owes them. Some have lost their property; their representatives say some have died under the financial strain. Bola, why do your friends get huge contracts while Nigerian contractors have to protest to be paid for work they have already done? Pay the contractors. Publish what is owed and when it will be paid. Nigerians are entitled to know whose prosperity your government is building.
Nigeria’s public debt stood at ₦166.79 trillion at the end of June, and your government is now discussing another $1.5 billion in World Bank loans. Before you borrow another dollar in the people’s name, tell them what the money already borrowed has delivered. Name the projects. Show what they cost, who benefited and who was paid.
From my first day in office, I will put affordability and the protection of life at the centre of government. We will begin bringing down the costs of food, fuel and power, improving access to healthcare and education, and restoring security to communities living in fear. I will account for public spending and measure progress by what Nigerians can afford and whether they can live safely.
Then there is your party chairman’s claim that more than 10 million Nigerians received ₦75,000 each in cash transfers—at least ₦750 billion in all. Professor Yilwatda says many beneficiaries have no phones. So how did your government identify, contact and pay them, particularly in parts of Yobe and Borno where insecurity makes access difficult? Did officials deliver the money by hand? If so, who delivered it and where are the receipts? If it went into bank accounts, show the transaction records. Nigerians are not asking you to expose poor families. They are asking for an auditable account of how the money reached them. If you could find ten million people to pay, you can account for the payments.
While politicians speak of hundreds of billions in relief, consider what happened at the Niger State Government House. Three people died in a stampede after a crowd gathered amid reports that ₦10,000 would be distributed. A mother, her daughter and another woman did not return home. I mourn them, and I repeat my call for a full account of how that gathering was organised.
Think of the families waiting for them that night. Think of the children who will grow up without a mother. What does it say about the condition of our country that the prospect of ₦10,000 can draw a desperate crowd, while its leaders declare an age of prosperity?
Bola, you have put the weight of Nigeria’s economic wellbeing on a skateboard. Families are struggling to keep their balance, businesses are falling, and you stand in Aso Rock declaring that the journey to prosperity is going smoothly.
Before I forget, you promised Nigerians lower transport fares from October 1. Today is October 1. Did your promise miss the bus?
In your Independence Day speech, you found time to attack my plan to make life affordable. But you did not tell commuters which additional routes became cheaper today, what the fares were before, what they cost now, or how many people can use them. Lower fares on a few routes are welcome, but they do not solve the transport crisis facing the rest of the country.
Bola, was this a Yahoo Yahoo promise or a hurried reply to my production subsidy proposal? You advertised cheaper transport from October 1. Today is October 1, and commuters are still asking where they can find the lower fares. Show them the routes and the prices. Nigerians cannot board an announcement.
Bola, publish the routes, the fares and the number of people benefiting. Show Nigerians the cheaper journey you promised.
My dear Bola, you said the people “cannot wait for tomorrow.” On that, I agree with you. Yet almost every answer in your address was about tomorrow. But Nigerians are hungry today. They pay transport fares today. They need jobs and safety today.
You also say, “We have made hard decisions together.” No, Bola! You made the decisions alone, not with Nigerians. The people have only paid the price for your reckless decisions. You cannot claim a shared journey while refusing to account for who has carried the burden and where the promised savings have gone.
Again, Bola, you told Nigerians that salaries and pensions are being paid “on time and in full.” Tell that to the military pensioners who protested over unpaid adjustments. Tell it to federal workers who have reported delayed salaries, wage awards and promotion arrears. A pensioner standing outside a government office to demand what is owed does not need a lecture about prosperity. Pay the outstanding entitlements, publish what remains unpaid, and stop claiming that everyone has been paid in full.
A growing government account is not a recovering Nigerian. A speech about prosperity is not prosperity. Show Nigerians where the savings went. Show them the relief. Or stop calling their pain a cure.
Our independence also demands political freedom. Nigerians must be free to question their leaders, organise peacefully and demand change. Public office belongs to the people. No President owns the voices of citizens.
On this day, I call for the rule of law to be applied fairly in every case. The continued detention of Sheikh Sani Khalifa Zaria and Mallam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai raises questions about due process that the authorities must answer. Following Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s conviction, his right to lawful appeal must be respected, while the grievances and divisions surrounding his case must be addressed seriously.
I also repeat my call for the release of the five young Nigerians arrested in Borno after wearing “Tinubu Must Go” T-shirts. The police have made further allegations against them; those allegations must be tested fairly. A political slogan on a shirt must never become a reason to imprison a Nigerian.
And I make this promise to every Nigerian who has stood in line to vote and later wondered whether that vote counted: if elected President, I will work to end election rigging. I will respect INEC’s independence, support the prompt publication of results from every polling unit, and insist that anyone caught buying votes or changing results faces the law – even if that person belongs to my party. Your vote must count as you cast it. You should not need powerful friends to make it count.
The coming election offers us a peaceful way to choose our course. To the young person who wonders whether one vote matters, to the parent who has lost faith in promises, and to the worker who has grown tired of waiting: this country is yours. Listen closely. Question every candidate, including me. Demand plans that can be examined and promises that can be measured. Protect your vote and refuse intimidation.
Bola Tinubu says Nigeria has crossed the Red Sea and that there must be “no looking back.” Let him come down from Aso Rock and meet the Nigerians still struggling to get to the other side. Looking back at a government’s record is a citizen’s right. It is how we decide whether those who hold power deserve more time.
We have looked back. We have counted what fuel costs, what food costs and what a wage can still buy. We have seen families waiting for relief while government asks for more patience. We have heard promises of prosperity from a President who cannot show millions of Nigerians where to find it.
Our founders did not win sovereignty so that a few could prosper while millions merely survive.
Their promise lives in ordinary hopes: a meal a family can afford, a safe road home, a child free to learn, and work that offers a path to a better life. Those hopes are neither extravagant nor beyond Nigeria’s reach.
Bola, the Promised Land is not in sight merely because you can see it from the villa. Nigerians must be able to reach it. We have chosen a different course, peacefully and together, through the power of our votes; the message is clear: Tinubu must go.
Happy Independence Day. May God bless you, and may God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Atiku Abubakar, GCON
Presidential Candidate, African Democratic Congress