ABUJA — Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has launched a blistering critique against the administration of President Bola Tinubu, accusing the federal government of presiding over a catastrophic collapse of national security and a severe economic downturn. In a strongly worded press statement released on Thursday, the opposition leader alleged that under the current political dispensation, the security situation has deteriorated to the point where terrified Nigerian families are now forced to treat kidnapping ransom payments as an expected, routine household expense.
The stinging remarks were made public via a formal brief issued by Atiku’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu. The communication represents a significant escalation in the ongoing political battle between the veteran politician and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) leadership, with the opposition moving to tap into widespread public frustration over rising inflation and persistent rural banditry.
A primary target of Atiku’s criticism was the presidency’s recent public defense of its macroeconomic policies. The former vice president argued that the administration’s continuous attempt to justify its massive borrowing by comparing Nigeria’s sovereign debt profile favorably with other African countries reflects a profound, dangerous disconnect from the grim daily struggles of ordinary citizens. He insisted that the economic data points being celebrated by state officials in Abuja mean absolutely nothing to millions of families who have been plunged into extreme poverty over the last three years.
> “It is both astonishing and insulting that at a time when millions of Nigerians can barely afford one meal a day, the presidency is celebrating debt figures as though indebtedness were an achievement,” Atiku stated through his media aide. “In many parts of Nigeria today, travelling by road has become a gamble with death. Families go to bed praying not to receive midnight calls announcing the abduction of loved ones.”
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The statement went on to paint a dark portrait of a nation increasingly besieged by unregulated criminal elements, highway gunmen, and sophisticated kidnapping syndicates. Atiku lamented that the basic structural duty of the state—which is the absolute preservation of life and property—has been effectively abandoned, forcing everyday citizens to develop their own grim survival mechanisms to cope with the threat of violence.
According to the former vice president, the institutional failure to contain these heavily armed groups has forced a highly disturbing normalization of criminal extortion within the domestic economy. He noted that instead of relying on the police or military for protection, communities and individual households are increasingly вынуждены to set aside emergency funds specifically to buy back their captured relatives from woodland hideouts.
> “Ransom payments have become as routine as school fees and house rent in many homes,” Atiku declared, highlighting the severe psychological and financial toll the kidnapping crisis is extracting from the middle class and rural populations alike.
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Beyond the direct threat of violence, the opposition flagbearer connected the nationwide security breakdown directly to the country's ongoing food inflation crisis. He attributed the country's sharply declining agricultural output to the simple reality that thousands of smallholder farmers can no longer safely access their farmlands due to the constant threat of lethal attacks, mass displacements, and illegal taxation by armed bandit groups across the major food-producing states of the Middle Belt and northern regions.
Atiku pointed out that this forced abandonment of agricultural fields has caused domestic food production to decline sharply. This shortfall has triggered a dangerous chain reaction, driving up the prices of basic dietary staples in urban markets and contributing significantly to widespread hunger and extreme hardship among vulnerable populations across all thirty-six states of the federation.
Addressing the broader fiscal architecture of the nation, the former vice president clarified that he does not completely oppose the concept of external sovereign borrowing, acknowledging that taking on debt can be highly beneficial to a developing state when the capital is properly managed, transparently deployed, and channeled directly into productive, wealth-generating infrastructure. However, he argued that Nigeria’s rapidly rising public debt stock under the current administration has not translated into any visible improvement in the living conditions or economic security of the citizenry. Instead, he maintained that the funds appear to be fueling administrative overheads and elite consumption while leaving future generations with an unsustainable debt burden.
He concluded his address by accusing the Tinubu administration of prioritizing high-priced public relations and state propaganda over the difficult, necessary work of addressing the country's pressing economic and structural challenges. Calling for an immediate, total overhaul of the national security architecture and a transparent review of current monetary policies, Atiku warned that urgent, decisive executive action must be taken immediately to halt the ongoing slide and prevent the country from tipping into a deeper state of socioeconomic deterioration.
