The economic stewardship of President Bola Tinubu’s government is emerging as a central theme in campaigns leading to next year’s general elections. While reforms that terminated petrol subsidies and produced greater stability in foreign exchange markets have been hailed as a rare success story on the African continent, they have also brought with them biting inflation that has seen Nigerians getting less for their naira.
To mitigate the effects, a new minimum wage of N70,000 per month was introduced. Whatever calculations he had in mind when declaring on May 29, 2023, that subsidy was gone, Tinubu surely didn’t factor in the destabilising effects of the United States-Iran conflict which have pushed global crude price over $100 per barrel.
Nigerians have now found themselves living in this surreal era where fuel pump price nearly breached the N1,500 mark in parts of the country. For an economy powered largely by petrol and diesel, transport costs have wiped out earnings of the average family. Businesses have seen their margins disappear from running generators on N2,000 per litre diesel.
All of this represents a gargantuan headache for an incumbent heading to the polls. While he can wave record-breaking foreign reserves (at $55 billion the highest in 18 years) and steady GDP growth in the air, these are not things the man in the street can relate to. All they want is to be able to buy a bowl of rice, a litre of petrol, at a price they’ve been used to.
Even when they grudgingly accept there may be international factors beyond the control of local authorities, they cling desperately to the belief that government can perform the miracles needed to make their lives less stressful.
One of the great mysteries of this period is that an unprecedented increase in revenues accruing to the states means they no longer owe backlog of salaries, yet the din from people groaning about hardship is not abating. This is understandable because state civil services only employ a fraction of the general population.
The situation has been exacerbated by a sharp drop in agricultural activity in many rural communities across the country due to security challenges. Boko Haram and ISWAP insurgents in the Northeast, bandits and Lakurawa terrorists in the Northwest, have turned what were once peaceful farmlands into killing fields.
Bread baskets in the North-Central zone have equally suffered from the activities of rogue herders and ethnic militias carrying out revenge attacks. The consequence is that many who would ordinarily be tilling the land have fled for their lives to Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camps. These are people who, for decades, thrived economically with little or no intervention in their lives from government.
Combine a significant drop in agricultural produce coming from the three Northern zones with declining productivity in Southern farmlands, unprecedented increases in fuel prices and you have a perfect storm of inflationary pressures. But to the credit of the government, inflation has been trending downwards in recent quarters. The pace may not be fast enough for most people, though.
President Tinubu understands that in making the case that there’s been economic progress, it must be done in terms that people can relate to. Last month, following a meeting with governors, he unveiled an initiative to crash transportation costs nationwide using Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) beginning from October 1.
This has been one of the administration’s pet ideas for blunting the biting effects of subsidy removal. Despite the country being gas rich, the spread of CNG infrastructure across the land has been slow. Conversion of petrol vehicles to gas-propelled ones has not kept pace. So, mobilising the entire governance apparatus across the nation to halve transport costs using a different energy source seems the right thing to do.
So far, the anticipated drop in cost hasn’t been achieved given low penetration of gas infrastructure. But developments in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and elsewhere show what potentially can be achieved with proper focus on CNG.
However, dramatic progress on this front is unlikely to silence shrill cries about hardship in the three months left before ballots are cast. The way discussions about the after effects of the Tinubu reforms have evolved, you would think economic struggle is an unknown experience in these parts.
Yet, we lived through the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) inspired Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) under General Ibrahim Babangida’s military administration. The implementation of those reforms triggered widespread upheavals across the country, leading to massive crackdown on student leaders, unionists and civil rights activists.
Tinubu tried to remind Nigerians of their history, arguing in his speech on Nigeria’s 66th Independence Anniversary on October 1 that the hardship facing many citizens didn’t start with his administration or his reforms. He blamed difficulties with food, school fees, and medical bills on decades of low productivity, poor infrastructure, accumulated economic distortions, and failed institutions he inherited.
It’s not clear how that argument was received. What’s obvious is that his leading rivals for the presidency – Atiku Abubakar of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) – believe that in the economic strain faced by many they’ve found a chink in the president’s armour.
A clear theme of Atiku’s campaign is that the incumbent made life more expensive for Nigerians, he would make things cheaper. He intends to deliver on that promise by removing subsidies which have been widely condemned as wasteful and unsustainable. Incidentally, he had vowed at the 2023 elections to end them.
Obi, for his part, dismissed the subsidy regime three years ago as a criminal enterprise. In the face of Atiku’s volte face, he insisted he would not return the country to the old practice – only for him to execute a comic U-turn promising a return to subsidies after he would have cleansed Nigeria of corruption. All of these grand deliverables within his promised one term of four years!
Wouldn’t it be great to see Nigeria listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the first corruption-free nation on earth? In a recent British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) interview Obi was asked how he planned to deliver on this precondition for returning subsidy. He said no one would pinch public funds because he and his family members won’t steal.
The interviewer drew his attention to the fact that former President Muhammadu Buhari was often portrayed as incorruptible. Not long after his exit from office a good number of his ministers are being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for stealing the nation blind. The NDC candidate retorted that Buhari wasn’t in charge; he would be!
Incumbents facing elections amidst economic strain are often imperilled. A historic reference point is the 1992 United States presidential election which pitted a Democratic Party underdog, Bill Clinton, against Republican incumbent, George Bush, who was still basking in the afterglow of victory in the Gulf War.
The Democrats successfully argued that the election was all about the economy, and not some foreign military conquest. Still, we’ve seen in places like Turkey in recent times where an incumbent facing tough economic challenges was re-elected.
A few days ago, influential British publication The Economist projected that despite the trying times, Tinubu was on course to win re-election. It might not be what some want to hear, but there’s evidence indicating that the likely impact of hardship in shaping the outcome of the 2027 polls might be overrated. It would appear that people have made their adjustments, or other factors are acting as counterweight to economic struggle.
Consider the fact that under the prevailing circumstances several elections have held since May 29, 2023. Each poll was framed as a referendum on Tinubu’s policies. Surprisingly, voters haven’t punished him or the ruling party for their lived experiences.
On August 16, 2025, elections were held in 16 constituencies across 13 states. The by-elections covered two senatorial districts in Anambra and Edo States, five federal constituencies in Edo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Ogun, and Oyo; nine constituencies in Adamawa, Anambra, Kaduna, Kano, Kogi, Niger, Taraba and Zamfara. APC prevailed in majority of them.
Eight governorship elections have been conducted across Nigeria since May 2023. The ruling party won in five states, while PDP prevailed in Bayelsa, APGA in Anambra, and Accord Party in Osun. A total of 4,875,767 votes were cast across all eight states. APC received 2,618,585, translating to 53.7% of the ballots cast.
On September 19, another five by-elections were held in Gombe, Kano, Bauchi and Delta States. APC won four of those contests, while Allied Peoples Movement (APM) took one seat in Bauchi.
This is a pointer that anyone looking to understand how the 2027 contest may play out would do well to consider a more complex mix of factors, rather than hanging on to the simplistic belief that current economic challenges would be the sole determinant.
NOTE: Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Theliberationnews
