Three years into the presidency of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria resembles a patient who was promised corrective surgery only to awaken from the operation poorer, hungrier and still bleeding. The slogans remain uplifting. The speeches are polished. The PowerPoint slides from government ministries continue to glow with the optimism of consultants billing by the hour. Yet outside the fortified compounds of Abuja, ordinary Nigerians increasingly experience the state not as an engine of hope, but as an elaborate mechanism for distributing suffering with bureaucratic efficiency.
When Tinubu assumed office in May 2023 under the grandiose banner of “Renewed Hope”, he inherited a troubled economy distorted by subsidies, exchange-rate absurdities and fiscal recklessness. In fairness, many of Nigeria’s structural ailments predated him. His predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, governed with the economic sophistication of a village pharmacist prescribing herbs for cancer. Subsidies ballooned. Multiple exchange rates encouraged arbitrage. The Central Bank degenerated into a quasi-political ATM. Nigeria, in effect, was borrowing money to sustain illusions.
Tinubu deserves some credit for recognizing that the fantasy could not continue indefinitely. Within hours of taking office, he abolished the petrol subsidy with the abruptness of a landlord removing a roof during the rainy season. Soon afterwards, his administration floated the naira, allowing the currency to discover what markets had long suspected: that it was worth far less than official propaganda suggested. Economists applauded. Foreign investors, those delicate migratory birds of global finance, briefly circled Nigeria once more. Foreign reserves improved. Portfolio inflows rose. The government proudly announced improvements in macroeconomic indicators. International institutions nodded approvingly. Reform, at last, had arrived. Unfortunately for Nigerians, macroeconomic reforms are easier to celebrate in plush conference halls than in markets where the price of rice now induces mild cardiac distress.
The removal of subsidies triggered an inflationary inferno. Petrol prices multiplied several times over. Transportation costs exploded. Food prices climbed with the determination of Himalayan mountaineers. Electricity tariffs rose. Healthcare costs surged. School fees became instruments of psychological warfare against parents. The naira’s devaluation transformed imported goods into luxury artefacts accessible mainly to politicians and oil smugglers. The government insists these are temporary sacrifices necessary for long-term prosperity. Nigerian citizens, however, have heard this sermon before. Structural adjustment in Africa often arrives wrapped in the language of reform but lands with the practical effect of organized impoverishment.
Indeed, the great paradox of Tinubu’s presidency is that while economic indicators have improved on paper, lived reality has deteriorated dramatically. Nigeria today increasingly resembles a country where statistics prosper while citizens starve. This contradiction is politically dangerous. Governments survive hardship when populations believe pain is transitional and fairly distributed. Nigerians increasingly believe neither. What infuriates many citizens is not merely suffering itself, but the perception that the ruling elite remains insulated from it. Ministers continue travelling in convoys that resemble small military invasions. Legislators maintain allowances that would embarrass Scandinavian monarchies. State governors commission vanity projects while citizens improvise survival strategies around darkness, inflation and insecurity.
Meanwhile, government revenues have risen substantially following subsidy removal. Federal allocations to states and local governments have increased markedly. Yet evidence of improved governance remains strangely elusive. Roads remain cratered. Public hospitals continue functioning as elaborate waiting rooms for death. Universities oscillate between strikes and decay. Electricity supply remains unreliable despite decades of reform rhetoric and billions supposedly invested in the sector. During his campaign, Tinubu boldly declared that Nigerians should reject his re-election bid if he failed to deliver stable electricity. It was an admirably reckless promise. Three years later, the national grid still collapses with the regularity of an ageing alcoholic descending staircases. Many businesses continue relying on diesel generators expensive enough to qualify as secondary tax systems.
If economic hardship were the administration’s only problem, perhaps Nigerians might endure patiently. But insecurity has deepened simultaneously. Banditry metastasizes across large swathes of the country. Kidnapping has evolved into a thriving national industry. Rural communities are routinely attacked. School abductions continue haunting national consciousness. In parts of Nigeria, the state appears present mainly through tax collectors and condolence statements. To be fair, the administration has recorded some tactical successes against insurgents in the north-east, particularly through cooperation with American forces targeting Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province. Yet isolated military gains cannot obscure the broader reality that millions of Nigerians remain profoundly unsafe.
Security, like economics, ultimately depends on public confidence. Citizens must believe the state possesses both competence and will. Increasingly, many do not. What then explains the administration’s growing disconnect from popular sentiment? Partly, it is ideological. Tinubu’s government appears genuinely convinced that macroeconomic orthodoxy alone constitutes governance. In this worldview, once exchange rates are liberalized and subsidies removed, prosperity will emerge almost automatically like steam from a kettle. But economics is not merely arithmetic. Reform without social cushioning can destabilize societies faster than unreformed dysfunction.
Successful reformers understand sequencing. They build safety nets before removing supports. They reduce elite waste before demanding sacrifice from citizens. They communicate transparently and empathetically. Above all, they demonstrate that pain serves a visible national purpose rather than merely financing a more comfortable ruling class. This administration has struggled badly at that politics of empathy. Nigerians hear lectures about sacrifice from officials whose lifestyles suggest the concept is largely theoretical. The result is a widening trust deficit. Citizens increasingly interpret every new reform announcement not as national rescue, but as another warning that survival itself is about to become more expensive.
The irony is that Tinubu remains one of Nigeria’s most politically gifted operators. For decades, he cultivated a reputation as master strategist, coalition builder and institutional tactician. Yet governance demands different instincts from opposition politics. Campaign slogans that electrify rallies often collapse upon contact with administrative reality. Three years on, the “Renewed Hope” agenda risks becoming remembered less as a program of national renewal than as a euphemism for collective endurance. Nigerians were promised prosperity after sacrifice. What they received instead was sacrifice with instalment plans.
The administration still has time to recalibrate. Inflation must be confronted more aggressively. Social protections require urgent expansion. Wasteful government spending should be visibly reduced. Power-sector reforms need acceleration beyond speeches and ceremonial project launches. Above all, the presidency must rediscover the human dimension of governance. For nations do not collapse merely because economies weaken. They collapse when citizens lose faith that hardship has meaning, direction or fairness. And increasingly, that is Nigeria’s most dangerous trend of all.
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