Atiku Mocks Tinubu's CNG Push, Nigerians Ask Why Everybody Waited Until Fuel Became Unaffordable To Discover Gas

So Atiku has decided today's target is the CNG conversion program, mocking it as part of the bigger fuel subsidy fight, and honestly, this is one of those political jabs that lands because everybody's already tired and looking for someone to blame their transport fare on.

The government's whole CNG pitch has been "convert your car, save money, cleaner energy, better future." Beautiful vision. Except the actual experience for most Nigerians has been long queues at the few available conversion centres, confusion about cost, and a rollout speed that makes NEPA light schedules look punctual. So when Atiku mocks it, he's not exactly inventing frustration from nothing, he's just putting a microphone in front of what people are already grumbling about in traffic.

But let's not pretend this is some fresh policy revelation from the opposition camp either. CNG as an alternative to petrol has been "the plan" under different names for years, quietly discussed, quietly shelved, quietly rediscovered whenever fuel prices spike hard enough that even government officials start feeling the transport budget pinch. Funny how gas has been sitting under Nigerian soil this whole time, but it took subsidy removal actually biting for everybody to suddenly remember it exists.

Meanwhile, the real comedy is watching both camps argue about the solution while completely agreeing on the problem: fuel is expensive, conversion is slow, and the average Nigerian is somewhere between the promise and the pump price, calculating whether today's transport fare makes sense against today's salary, because neither number has been cooperating with the other.

By the time this particular round of blame-tennis is done, expect no actual acceleration in the CNG rollout, no real subsidy resolution, just two men taking turns explaining why the other person's plan doesn't work, while the man on the bike still has to find fuel money before he goes to work tomorrow morning.

Because in Nigeria, the policy debate moves fast. The actual conversion centre queue does not.