By Merciful Omoba<\/p>\n
Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has criticised the Bola Tinubu administration over the reported \u20a617.5 trillion spent by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), on pipeline security and related costs within 12 months, describing it as \u201cone of the most brazen financial scandals\u201d in Nigeria\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
In a statement from his media office, Atiku argued that the figure nearly equals the entire \u20a618 trillion spent on fuel subsidy over 12 years, a programme he said directly cushioned millions of Nigerians.<\/p>\n
He accused the administration of \u201crobbing Nigerians to pay cronies\u201d through opaque security and subsidy-related contracts.<\/p>\n
Atiku said it was contradictory for government to demand sacrifices from citizens while funnelling funds that \u201ccould transform the power sector, rebuild refineries, or fund universal healthcare\u201d into questionable deals.<\/p>\n
He noted that petrol now sells for over \u20a61,000 per litre in some areas, despite the government claiming subsidy removal.<\/p>\n
Atiku cited NNPCL records showing \u20a67.13 trillion spent on \u201cenergy-security cost\u201d and \u20a68.67 trillion on \u201cunder-recovery,\u201d which he described as \u201cnew coinages\u201d to obscure continued subsidy payments.<\/p>\n
He demanded transparency, asking: \u201cWho are the companies paid under these contracts? And what justifies the rise in energy-security costs from \u20a66.25tn in 2024 to \u20a68.67tn in 2025?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Merciful Omoba Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has criticised the Bola Tinubu administration over the reported \u20a617.5 trillion spent by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), on pipeline security and related costs within 12 months, describing it as \u201cone of the most brazen financial scandals\u201d in Nigeria\u2019s history. In a statement from his media […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":79497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79498,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79496\/revisions\/79498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}