BY MEDIA DIRECTORATE ADC-PCC
PRESIDENT TINUBU CANNOT PUT A 90-DAY DEADLINE ON HUNGER
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the press.
The presidential election is 86 days away. President Tinubu’s National Economic Council has announced a new cost-of-living plan that runs for 90 days. Nigerians should look at those two numbers together. After three and a half years of hardship, his government has set a deadline for relief that falls after Nigerians have voted. Why do its promises suddenly have deadlines? Because elections do.
Call this what it is: election bait and a scam. Anyone who has set a rat trap knows how bait works. You place a morsel of food where the rat can see it. The food is there to draw it in; the trap does its work when the rat reaches for it. President Tinubu is holding out the promise of affordable food to families who are hungry now, but asking them to vote before the 90 days are up.
They want Nigerians to carry a 90-day IOU into the polling booth. They are betting that the noise of the campaign will drown out the promise and that, after the votes are counted, nobody will ask what happened to affordable food. Vote first. Relief later. That is the trap. Nigerians should refuse the bait and judge this government by the three and a half years they have already lived through.
The plan lists five priorities: food affordability, tax harmonisation, completion of important projects, removal of investment bottlenecks and support for households.
Read that list carefully. It describes the very problems Nigerians have been begging this government to address for three and a half years. Families have cut meals. Workers have watched transport consume their wages. Manufacturers have struggled to keep producing, and businesses have closed. The government wants Nigerians to look forward to the next three months and forget what they have endured for the last three and a half years. We will not allow that.
When President Tinubu removed the petrol subsidy, the effect on transport, food and production costs was predictable. Protection for vulnerable households should have accompanied that decision. The government should have explained how subsidy savings would be spent, prepared support for businesses facing higher costs and set clear measures by which Nigerians could judge the results.
Instead, it imposed the cost immediately and left families to wait for the benefit. Now, three and a half years later, it announces affordable food and household support as though it has only just discovered that Nigerians need to eat.
A government cannot put a 90-day deadline on hunger, the cost-of-living crisis and insecurity and call it an economic policy.
And tomorrow, President Tinubu is expected in Kaduna to flag off his re-election campaign. Before the music starts and the crowd is assembled, he should remember what Kaduna has endured during his presidency.
On 3 December 2023, an Army drone struck civilians gathered for a Maulud celebration in Tudun Biri. At least 85 people were killed. President Tinubu sent his Vice President to visit the survivors. He did not go himself to sit with the families mourning their dead.
In September 2024, residents of Giwa reported that another military airstrike killed at least 24 civilians. In Kajuru, families have buried loved ones and searched for relatives taken by bandits. In September 2025, an attack involving kidnapping in Kachia affected 152 people; eight deaths and nine injuries were recorded.
Kaduna has suffered disasters as well as violence. In July 2025, windstorms and rain affected 6,172 people and damaged hundreds of shelters across five local government areas. In September, flooding in Zaria affected 476 peopleand left dozens injured.
Kaduna needed attention when families were burying their dead, searching for their children and clearing wreckage from their homes. Yet the Presidency’s account of President Tinubu’s visit to Kaduna in September 2025 listed a wedding and a courtesy call. Now, with an election approaching, he is coming to launch a campaign.
President Tinubu can find his way to Kaduna for a wedding. He can find his way there for votes. Why was it so difficult to find his way to the families who needed to see their President?
He should not expect grieving families to become the backdrop for a campaign celebration. Before asking Kaduna for another mandate, he should tell the people what has been done for the victims of Tudun Biri, what became of the investigations into civilian deaths, and how he will protect communities still living with the threat of abduction.
We have seen this same pattern of announcements in the cost-of-living crisis. NNPC began a petrol discount promotion on 1 October, which the government subsequently presented as part of its relief effort. I went to NNPC Retail stations myself. The attendants told me there was no discount, and I bought petrol at the increased price of ₦1,405 per litre.
With barely a week left before that offer expires, this is what I encountered as a customer: a promise of relief and a higher price at the pump. If NNPC says a discount is available through an app, it must explain why a motorist arriving at its station was told there was none. How many customers received the discount? At which stations? How many litres were sold at the discounted price? Publish the figures.
NNPC has about 900 retail stations in a country where Nigerians buy petrol from thousands of outlets. What reach does a ₦66-per-litre promotion have when it is confined to that network? And what lasting relief does ₦66 offer a family whose transport and food bills remain high?
President Tinubu announces relief at a podium. Nigerians get to the pump and pay more. Now his government asks the country to believe another announcement, this time with a 90-day deadline.
The timing is impossible to ignore. Atiku Abubakar has made the cost-of-living crisis central to his campaign and vowed to make Nigeria affordable again. President Tinubu and his failed economists want to appropriate that message with a plan that runs through the election. Nigerians should recognise the attempt to sell them three months of hope in exchange for forgetting three and a half years of pain.
We are asking President Tinubu to stop treating temporary announcements as a substitute for lasting relief. Nigerians need an economic policy that survives election day. If this government cannot provide one after three and a half years, another 90-day promise will not settle the matter.
Let us examine the five priorities:
Food affordability: Which costs will fall for farmers, transporters and traders? When will families see lower prices in the market? And what will keep food affordable after the 90 days? A family cannot plan its meals around an election timetable.
Tax harmonisation: Which charges will actually be removed or combined, and when? A trader or transporter needs to know what they will stop paying. We are aware of additional taxes being planned for 2027. The government should publish the full schedule now and tell Nigerians whether its promise of relief today will be followed by higher charges after the election.
Important projects: Which projects will be completed within 90 days? Where are they? How much remains to be paid, and when will the public be able to use them? A project is complete when it serves people, not when it is marked complete on a government dashboard.
Investment bottlenecks: Manufacturers need reliable power, workable transport costs and access to affordable finance. Which of these will President Tinubu fix in 90 days? Businesses cannot reopen, invest or hire on the strength of a press release.
Household support: Who qualifies? How much will each household receive? When will payments begin, and what happens after day 90? Publish the eligibility rules, the budget and the means of payment.
There is a further issue Nigerians must not overlook. A registration form being distributed under the name “Arise for Tinubu 2027” asks for voter identification, bank details and phone numbers. That is political data collection involving sensitive personal information. Who is collecting it? How will it be used? And does it have any connection to the household support the government has announced?
No Nigerian should have to give voter or bank details to a political group to obtain public relief. President Tinubu’s government must state unequivocally whether this registration exercise is connected to any publicly funded programme. If it is not, it should explain how it will prevent its household support plan from being used to recruit voters or collect their data.
President Tinubu’s government has asked Nigerians to carry the burden of its reforms. Nigerians have every right to demand proof that the promised benefits will reach them and continue after the votes are counted. People do not object to reform because they fail to understand it. They object when they are told to sacrifice today for relief that never arrives, or arrives with an expiry date.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has vowed to make Nigeria affordable again. That means discipline in public spending, targeted relief that reaches households, lower costs of producing and moving essential goods, and conditions in which Nigerian manufacturers can expand and employ people. It means judging economic policy by what families can afford, not by how many deadlines a government announces.
President Tinubu should answer two questions today:
Are Nigerians better off than they were in May 2023?
And will they still be able to afford food on day 91 of his plan?
Until he can answer both, Nigerians have every reason to regard this 90-day exercise as a political timetable dressed up as economic relief.
President Tinubu made life expensive. Atiku Abubakar will make life affordable again.
Thank you.
PHRANK SHAIBU
Director of Strategic Communication, ADC Presidential Campaign Council
23rd October 2026
