Atiku hits Tinubu on privatisation, credentials, cost of living crisis

By Omeiza Ajayi, ABUJA

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on Friday launched a counterattack on President Bola Tinubu, accusing him of hypocrisy, historical distortion and intellectual dishonesty in what his camp described as a “reckless tirade”.

Atiku’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, said in a statement on Friday that his camp was responding to Thursday night’s remarks by the president, where he accused the former vice president of mishandling the privatisation policy among other issues.

“Atiku Abubakar’s attention has been drawn to the latest reckless tirade by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu — a performance that exposes not just desperation, but a troubling pattern of hypocrisy and historical amnesia,” the statement read.

Shaibu argued that Tinubu’s criticism of the former Vice President’s economic record falls apart under scrutiny, recalling that the President had previously opposed the very reforms he now appears to be replicating in power.

The statement pointed to a string of companies — including Oando Plc, Conoil Plc, Ardova Plc, Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals, Benue Cement Company, and Transcorp Hilton Abuja — as enduring proof of the success of the privatisation programme Atiku supervised.

By contrast, Shaibu argued that the Tinubu administration has commercialised the national oil company “in opacity — without clear valuation, without transparency, and with lingering questions about who truly benefits. This is not reform; it is privatisation without accountability.

“It is not our fault that the President does not and cannot read, because Bola Tinubu has a history of attending a school in Lagos two years before it was founded, upon which he claimed his… Chicago State University degree.

“If he were properly educated, he would have acquainted himself with the privatisation records in the presidency or the painstaking account of these reforms as captured by Mallam Nasir El-Rufai in The Accidental Public Servant, where the privatisation programme was clearly documented as a bold and structured effort to dismantle inefficiency and drive private sector-led growth,” the statement added.

The statement also condemned the tone of the president’s remarks, arguing that a resort to mockery signals a deeper problem at the heart of his leadership.

“The president’s attempt to reduce a serious economic legacy to playground ridicule only underscores a deeper problem: a leadership more comfortable with insults than with facts.

“Across the country, families are skipping meals, businesses are shutting their doors, and hard-working citizens are watching their incomes evaporate under the weight of relentless inflation and a collapsing purchasing power.

“What has been marketed as reform has translated into hardship without relief — policies that bite harder each day while offering no clear path to recovery.

“A leader who has not fully resolved questions about his own background should exercise restraint before casting aspersions on others. Nigerians are watching,” said Shaibu.

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