The “future of Nigerians has been effectively mortgaged to President Bola Tinubu, his family, and associates,” according to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who charged President Tinubu on Thursday of transforming Nigeria into a commercial corporation. This comes as the former vice president voiced concerns that, even once the president steps down, it will be extremely difficult to free Tinubu from Nigeria’s bonds. In a statement released by his media adviser Paul Ibe, Atiku Abubakar said that Tinubu had also incorporated his commercial interests in Nigeria, in the same manner that he had incorporated the public companies of Lagos into his private firms.
“Tinubu has started to replicate this at the federal level, just as Alpha Beta, Primero, and others serve as his proxies in Lagos, overseeing vital sectors and producing income for him and his family,” he claims. The NNPC’s operations and the fact that the government-owned oil firm had transferred its retail division to OVH, a business in which Oando, under the leadership of Wale Tinubu, controls 49%, were referenced by the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) presidential candidate in the 2023 election.
Atiku expressed concern that the unlawful takeover of the NNPC by corporate cabals around the present president had obscured his plans to privatize the firm and make it more transparent. Five months prior to the elections, in October 2022, NNPC Retail made the contentious announcement that it had purchased OVH and all of its gas stations. NNPCL already owned roughly 550 filling stations across the country but said it was boosting its capacity by acquiring OVH, which had only 94 stations and 100 others leased.
