Daily Trust Editorial, May 29, 2025
Two years ago on this day, May 29, 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was inaugurated into office as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in succession to President Muhammadu Buhari. President Tinubu ascended the office against the background of great economic challenges. The currency reform embarked upon at the tail end of Buhari’s administration, without adequate preparations, had caught Nigerians off guard. The government’s abrupt decision to redesign the naira resulted in severe economic dislocation affecting small, medium and large businesses alike. The cash crunch created a severe liquidity crisis in the country, with Nigerians not being able to access their cash deposits in banks to meet necessary household needs.
The Nigerian economy, already reeling from structural defects, plummeted further into a tailspin, and hopes of Nigerians for economic recovery seemed forlorn.
It was in these dire circumstances that President Tinubu came to power with an eight-point agenda, which he hoped to revive the comatose economy and restore social harmony in the country.
The eight-point items, which constituted President Tinubu’s policy christened ‘’The Renewed Hope Agenda’’, were: food security, ending poverty, economic growth and job creation, access to capital, inclusivity, improving security, the rule of law and fighting corruption.
Two years on, which is the mid-point of his four year term, Nigerians are still struggling to come to terms with the outcome of the implementation of these items.
The major talking points among Nigerians in this respect are: the subsidy removal, currency devaluation and hiking of interest rates.
The removal of subsidies on petroleum products was aimed at deregulating the oil and gas sector and deploying the subsidies saved into improvement of education, health services and provision of infrastructure and transportation so the administration said.
The devaluation of the naira was meant to remove the disparity between the official and market rates of the currency, effectively allowing it to be determined by market forces, while the hike in interest rates was intended to tame inflation by stanching the easy access to money.
Although the administration acknowledged the pains brought by the implementation of these policies, it, however, assured that the projected gains will assuage and reward the sacrifices made by Nigerians.
Within the two years that these policies have been in place, the overwhelming verdict among Nigerians is that rather than bring the succour it promised, the administration has exacerbated the situation it met the ground across all areas of life.
The removal of fuel subsidy has resulted in a quantum leap in government revenues, but the expected improvement in education, health and social sectors is not there. Rather, it brought in a leap in the cost of living, the closure of many medium and small scale enterprises, rendering many Nigerians jobless.
Similarly, the hike in interest rates, which the administration hoped would drive down inflation, has instead had the opposite effect. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has, over the past months, recorded an upward trend in inflationary and unemployment figures in the country, which is nudging close to over 30 per cent even with the rebasing of its assessment parameters.
Thus, with this less than encouraging performance in the implementation of its policies that it hoped would drive the eight point agenda, the Tinubu administration had found it well-nigh difficult to satisfy the yearnings of Nigerians on that score.
Many Nigerians believe that the administration’s major policies were conceived and implemented without baseline studies and timelines on achievable milestones along the way. In the absence of a clear and realistic roadmap in the conception and implementation of policies, over the past two years, the administration has invariably found itself implementing hodgepodge policies of palliatives, appeasement, inducement and even coercion, which often leads it to contradict and derail from its stated objectives.
All said, we at the Daily Trust believe that there is a clear and urgent need for the Tinubu administration to go back to the drawing board on its policies and programmes in the remaining two years of its first term in office.
Accordingly, the administration certainly needs to introduce some much needed rigour and detailed thinking in conceiving and implementing policies for positive outcomes. For this, the administration must jettison its reliance on cut and paste templates on economic policy formulation and management, unrealistic assumptions based on superficial and prejudicial understanding of the complexity of Nigeria as a country and a commitment to include and work for Nigerians of all walks of life.
The administration needs to take urgent action to provide relief to Nigerians who have been forced into difficulties following the implementation of its policies. It must realise that it was elected to ensure better living conditions for the ordinary Nigerians, not the opposite.
