There is a question on the lips of many Nigerians today, whispered in market stalls, muttered in traffic jams, debated in beer parlours, and sighed in private living rooms: ‘Is life better now than it was two years ago?’
The instinctive answer is quick, sharp, and unanimous – no. But the danger is not in the answer itself; it is in the very question. For the question carries within it a fatal illusion – that if nothing had changed, if the nation had clung tightly to the status quo of May 2023, then life today would be as it was then. It presumes that the price of a litre of petrol would have stood still, that the cost of rice would have remained steady, and that the exchange rate would have stayed calm like a placid river. But reality is not a stagnant pond; it is a restless tide. And the Nigeria of 2023 was not a pond at all – it was a raging whirlpool pulling the nation downwards.
A nation on the edge of ruin
Let us peel back the calendar to those days of May 2023. The nation was like a fevered patient trembling on a hospital bed, pulse weak, breathing shallow. The economy was already gasping, the naira wheezing under the burden of reckless printing. Over N30 trillion had been conjured out of thin air, not to build, not to innovate, but simply to spend. Inflation was not creeping – it was galloping, trampling the poor first, then reaching hungrily for the middle class.
Federal revenue was no better. Ninety-seven percent of it was devoured by debt servicing. Imagine a man earning N100 and handing N97 of it to creditors, then borrowing again at usurious rates just to pay his children’s school fees and buy garri for the house. That was Nigeria.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), once envisioned as a fountain of national wealth, had become a bottomless pit. Royalties meant for the federation account were poured into the subsidy fire. Petroleum Profit Tax, that should have funded hospitals and roads, was rerouted into the same inferno. And when even these sacrifices failed, the unimaginable occurred – the future itself was mortgaged. Barrels of oil not yet drilled were pledged as collateral, borrowed against at double-digit interest, just so the nation could continue drinking the sweet poison of subsidised petrol.
By then, Nigeria could truly boast of no more than 200,000 unencumbered barrels of oil a day. A thin margin, thinner than a razor’s edge, hardly enough to keep the economy alive for half a year.
Had this reckless indulgence continued, by the close of 2023 the nation would have faced its own Sri Lanka moment – citizens clutching naira notes like useless leaves, praying in vain for a single litre of fuel. Petrol stations would have been graveyards of silence, their pumps like broken ribs sticking out of a collapsed chest. Commerce would have stuttered to a halt. And all the hopes of a Dangote refinery would have been nothing more than a mirage in the desert.
Nigeria was not on the road to comfort; it was on the brink of collapse.
The bitter medicine
Then came reform – like a surgeon rushing in with a scalpel, knowing the operation will be painful, but also knowing that without it the patient will surely die. Subsidy was removed. Exchange rates were adjusted. Fiscal tightening was introduced. It was bitter medicine, yes, but medicine nonetheless.
The nation groaned. Prices rose. Families tightened their belts to the last hole. Businesses cried out. But the truth remains: this is the agony of treatment, not the convulsion of death. It is the fire of purification, not the ashes of ruin. Without reform, Nigeria would not be in harder times before better times; it would already be in hardest times with no tomorrow to speak of.
Achievements amidst the storm
It is easy to forget, amid the storm, that there are seeds already being planted. Infrastructure is stirring again. Roads, railways, and bridges are not built in a day, but the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway now stretches like a ribbon of hope across the map. Each kilometre laid is not just tar; it is a stitch in the torn fabric of regional development.
The digital economy hums with new promise. Tech investments and fintech innovations are beginning to sketch the outlines of a future where Nigeria is not merely Africa’s consumer market, but its technological heartbeat.
Foreign investment is trickling back. Those who fled in distrust are returning, cautious but curious, like birds watching the sky after a storm. Pledges of capital, promises of factories, new diplomatic engagements – these are the ripples that may one day swell into waves.
Food security is back on the agenda. Efforts to boost local agriculture, to arm smallholder farmers with tools and credit may yet reduce the humiliating dependence on imported staples. The farmer’s hoe, sharpened with policy, could become the nation’s shield against hunger.
These do not yet soften the bite of inflation in the market. The woman counting tomatoes still sighs. The taxi driver still winces at the pump. But the scaffolding of a stronger economy is being erected, piece by piece, even if the house is not yet habitable.
The distraction
And yet, while the patient struggles through recovery, some prefer to debate the doctor’s childhood. Did he attend primary school? Who were his classmates? Why has he not named them one by one? Why has he not gone to court?
Such arguments are smoke while the house is on fire. They are shadows dancing on the wall while the real battle rages outside.
History does not record Roosevelt’s classmates; it remembers how he steered America through the Depression. No one asks Lee Kuan Yew to name his first teacher; they remember the Singapore he built from swamp to skyline. Leadership is not a roll call of old schoolmates. It is a ledger of results.
Certificates are paper; governance is iron. And the iron question before us is not did he attend this or that school, but is he performing or not?
Tinubu has chosen not to waste his breath on distractions. He has fixed his gaze on the mountain ahead, rather than turning to chase every barking dog on the roadside. A mute man in the marketplace may seem weak, but sometimes silence is the loudest declaration: I am busy with what matters.
Between anger and understanding
Nigerians are justly angry. Anger rises from the empty wallet, from the landlord’s knock, from the hungry child. But anger, if it must burn, should burn in the right direction. It should not be misdirected at personalities, or swallowed by conspiracy theories, or squandered in nostalgia for the subsidy days. Those ‘cheap’ days were not days of blessing; they were days of deceit, when the nation’s lifeblood was drained behind a mask of temporary relief.
To demand their return is to beg for national suicide – a slow, sweet death disguised as comfort.
The long road
Nigeria today is walking through a narrow valley. The road is rough, the sun scorching and the burden heavy. Many stumble. Many curse. But the truth is stark: without reform, there would be no road at all – only a cliff edge and a plunge into ruin.
The task of leadership is not to make today painless; it is to make tomorrow possible. Tinubu’s reforms are not a lullaby; they are a bugle call. They do not promise instant comfort; they promise survival first, stability next, prosperity later.
We stand, therefore, between pain and progress. And while the storms roar and the journey bruises our feet, storms eventually clear the skies, and valleys eventually lead to mountaintops.
The real question is not about certificates tucked away in some drawer of the past. The real question is simple, urgent, unromantic: is Nigeria being steered away from collapse?
And the answer, however grudging, however painful, is yes.