Atiku outlines the policies he would have implemented differently if he had been president: $10 billion for MSMEs and the progressive elimination of subsidies.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate for 2023, Atiku Abubakar, claims that if he had won the presidency of Nigeria, his reforms would have “benefited from more adequate preparations” and “more sufficient diagnostic assessment of the country’s conditions.”

Abubakar claimed that his policy changes would have “protected our fragile economy against a much deeper crisis by preventing business collapse” in a post on his X account on Sunday.

He called President Bola Tinubu’s administration “overkill” for raising the energy cost, floating the currency rate, and eliminating the gasoline subsidy.

In order to “first eliminate revenue leakages arising from governance, including the cost of running the government and the government procurement process,” the former vice president stated that he would have set an example.

He also said that “alternative approaches to conflict resolution such as diplomacy, intelligence, improved border control, deploying traditional institutions, and good neighborliness” would have been used by his administration.

According to Abubakar, he would have established an economic stimulus fund (ESF) “to support MSMEs across all economic sectors with an initial investment capacity of approximately US$10 billion.”

The former vice president claimed that even though he supported eliminating the gasoline subsidy, his government would have implemented the measures using “a gradualist approach.”

“The abrupt and total elimination of subsidies would not have occurred. We used a gradualist approach while I was vice president, and we finished phases 1 and 2 of the reform before the end of our term, which is instructive,” he added.

According to Abubakar, his government would have a “managed-floating system” of foreign exchange.

“We would not be able to run an open, private sector-friendly economy under a fixed exchange rate system, so it was out of the question,” he stated.

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But, considering Nigeria’s fundamental economic circumstances, implementing a floating exchange rate regime would be overkill.

“We would have urged our central bank to handle foreign exchange in a gradualist manner. It would have been better to have a managed-floating system.

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