Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has dismissed the Federal Government’s much-celebrated FAAC revenue “boom” as a carefully packaged scam of numbers, insisting that the rising naira allocations only look impressive until they are measured against the naira’s collapse, soaring inflation and the shrinking purchasing power of ordinary Nigerians.
Atiku accused the Federal Government of presenting an inflated picture of economic progress through rising FAAC allocations.
In a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said Nigerians should not be misled by the monthly announcement of trillions of naira when the currency in which those figures are denominated has lost substantial value and ordinary citizens face sharply higher costs for almost everything.
“The arithmetic is brutal,” Atiku said. “In 2019, FAAC distribution was approximately ₦7.85 trillion, worth about $25.6 billion at the prevailing exchange rate.
“By 2025, FAAC had risen on paper to approximately ₦21.9 trillion, yet its dollar value had fallen to roughly $14.6 billion. So while government parades almost three times as many naira, the underlying dollar value is more than 40 per cent lower.
“That is not an economic miracle. That is money illusion. You cannot batter the currency, allow inflation to ravage purchasing power and then wave bigger naira figures before Nigerians as evidence that the country has become richer. Bigger numbers do not cancel smaller value,” he noted.
The former vice president said the gap between nominal figures and real value is clearest in the experience of ordinary workers.
He cited the minimum wage as an example: ₦30,000 in 2019 was worth roughly $83; by May 2023, the same amount was worth about $65. The current ₦70,000 minimum wage, at an exchange rate of around ₦1,320 to the dollar, is worth only about $53.
“That is Tinubu’s money illusion in its simplest form,” Atiku said. “The figure in your hand is bigger, but the value in your pocket is smaller.
“A worker can earn more naira today and still afford less food, less transport, less electricity, less medicine and less housing than before. Government counts the naira but conveniently refuses to count what the naira can buy.”
He argued that the true test of economic performance is not the size of FAAC allocations but what those funds can purchase and the obligations they can meet.
“If FAAC is truly booming, then where is the boom? Where is it in the price of food? Where is it in transport? Where is it in electricity, healthcare, housing and jobs? Where is it in the purchasing power of salaries? Government cannot become richer on paper while the people become poorer in reality and then expect Nigerians to applaud the contradiction.”
Atiku also pointed to the continuing debt of state governments.
Citing a September 2026 report based on Debt Management Office data, he noted that 12 states whose governors are nearing the end of their tenures together carry a combined debt burden of approximately ₦5.3 trillion – ₦2.16 trillion in domestic debt and about $2.33 billion in foreign obligations.
“You cannot boast endlessly about unprecedented FAAC allocations while states remain heavily indebted, pension and gratuity obligations persist, contractors chase payments and governments continue to carry enormous liabilities,” he said.
“If the money is as unprecedented as we are constantly told, Nigerians have every right to ask the most elementary question: where has the money gone?”
Atiku called on the administration to apply the same scrutiny to government expenditure, tax concessions, import waivers, revenue exemptions, duplicated and abandoned projects and other areas of potential waste that it demands of citizens seeking relief from high living costs.
“You cannot defend concessions for the powerful, tolerate waste within government and then suddenly become an apostle of fiscal discipline when ordinary Nigerians ask for relief from unbearable living costs. Fiscal responsibility that operates only against the poor is not reform. It is cruelty dressed up in economic grammar.”
Nigerians, Atiku stressed, experience the economy through daily realities, markets, transport, school fees, medicine and food, not through FAAC communiqués or government charts.
“Nigerians do not eat FAAC figures. They do not pay school fees with percentages. They do not buy medicine with press conferences, and they do not enter buses with government charts. They live in the real economy, and the real economy is measured by what their money can buy.
“More naira is not automatically more prosperity. Bigger figures do not mean bigger value. When supposedly record allocations coexist with weaker purchasing power, enormous debts and outstanding obligations, government cannot simply shout ‘FAAC’ and expect Nigerians to stop asking questions.”
Framing the issue as one of affordability and quality of life, Atiku concluded: “This is the contrast at the heart of the economic debate: Tinubu made life expensive; Atiku will make life affordable again. Affordability must mean cheaper transportation, lower pressure on food prices, more manageable energy costs, stronger purchasing power and an economy in which the income of ordinary Nigerians can once again meet the necessities of everyday life.
“The test is brutally simple: what is the money worth? What has it delivered? What obligations has it settled? And are Nigerians actually better off? Until those questions are answered, this FAAC celebration remains exactly what the numbers show it to be: more naira on paper, less value in reality.”
