Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has again launched a blistering attack on President Bola Tinubu’s economic policies, accusing the administration of suffocating Nigerian businesses while foreign investors increasingly pull their money out of the country.
Atiku, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), said the latest investment figures represented a damning verdict on the Tinubu administration’s economic management.
He made the allegations in a statement issued on Tuesday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu.
Atiku cited data from the Nigerian Exchange, which showed that foreign investors injected N513.36 billion into the Nigerian equities market between January and July 2026 but withdrew N779.43 billion during the same period, resulting in a net capital outflow of N266.07 billion.
He said foreign outflows surpassed inflows in every month within the seven-month period, describing the development as a sharp deterioration from the situation in 2023.
“This is not merely an investment statistic. It is a confidence verdict on the Tinubu economy,” Atiku said.
The former vice-president also raised concerns over the Federal Government’s increasing reliance on domestic borrowing, saying government borrowing had surged by 90.5 per cent to N24.7 trillion in just eight months.
According to him, credit extended to government had also grown more than four times faster than credit available to the private sector, a development he said was choking businesses already struggling with high operating costs.
“So, the picture is now painfully clear: Tinubu’s government is crowding Nigerian businesses out of the domestic credit market while foreign investors are taking their money and heading for the exit,” he said.
Atiku painted a grim picture of the economy, declaring: “Local businesses are suffocating. Foreign capital is fleeing. Government borrowing is exploding. Food prices have skyrocketed. Transportation costs are crushing families.”
He accused the Tinubu administration of celebrating its economic reforms despite what he described as deepening hardship confronting households and businesses.
“Yet, with Nigerians crushed under the weight of its disastrous policies, the Tinubu administration still has the audacity to celebrate itself for presiding over an economic catastrophe of its own making,” he alleged.
Atiku argued that Nigeria could not genuinely claim economic recovery while entrepreneurs struggled to access affordable credit, manufacturers battled rising production costs, households lost purchasing power and foreign investors remained reluctant to keep their funds in the country.
He said investors were paying closer attention to economic fundamentals than government speeches or headline growth figures.
According to him, such fundamentals include policy consistency, inflation, purchasing power, predictable regulation and the prospect of earning sustainable real returns.
“And their verdict is increasingly unmistakable: take the money and run,” he said.
The ADC candidate called for a fundamental shift in economic policy, urging the government to focus on restoring investor confidence, reducing the cost of doing business and making energy and transportation more affordable.
He also advocated policies that would boost domestic production and place the private sector at the centre of economic growth rather than relying heavily on government borrowing.
“That is the fundamental difference between Tinubu’s economics of government consumption and Atiku’s economics of private-sector production and household affordability,” he said.
Atiku further warned that the government could not simultaneously squeeze the private sector through aggressive borrowing, weaken household purchasing power and still expect Nigeria to attract and retain investment.
“You cannot borrow the private sector dry, impoverish consumers and then advertise yourself to the world as an investment destination. The investors are already answering the propaganda. They are leaving,” he said.
