Today makes it exactly a year since Bola Ahmed Tinubu stepped into office as Nigeria’s fifth president in the post-military years. Within minutes of his inauguration, the president made the very consequential decision that has for the most part directed the course of his administration and defined his presidency as a costly political entreprise in the national imagination- the removal of the subsidy on petroleum. Nearly everything that makes living meaningful for most Nigerians depend on the availability of affordable premium motor spirit or petrol that Nigeria has produced in crude form after it was first discovered in commercial quantity in Oloibiri in 1956.  

Within hours of the announcement of the removal of subsidy on fuel, the cost of transportation rose by about 400 per cent with domino effect on the price of food and related services. Food inflation that began well before Tinubu came into office, rising steadily and incrementally on a quarterly basis took on a nightmarish turn, going on a galloping runaway trend that has so far defied and failed to respond to the best panaceas deployed by Abuja. In spite of the criticisms that attended that decision the move was no doubt a bold step and its immediate aftermath was far less than the picture of Armageddon than financial experts, economists and the unhappy legion of politicians that Tinubu defeated in the presidential election had predicted. 

That probably gave the president the confidence to go ahead with other stringent measures that he projected could help steer the Nigerian economy out of the woods, namely, the streamlining of the currency market which further went into a tailspin and descended into a dark hole of irrelevance when juxtaposed with other major currencies of the world like the American dollar and the British pound. 

To be sure, all that President Bola Tinubu’s policies achieved has been to worsen the condition of an economy that was not only bad but had been on the verge of falling into a coma. His was an inherited burden. Neither he nor the policies he initiated were the origin of the problem, which was an accretion of disastrous decisions, policy failures and unspeakable corruption that came to a head under the bumbling Muhammadu Buhari regime. The net effect was a wrecked economy and unbearable social and political condition that was compounded by an unparalleled state of insecurity, certainly the worst since the Nigerian Civil War. The economy, now on the life support of huge foreign loans, was only being managed, not run, on a touch and go basis. 

The decision to remove oil subsidy had been made with everything that would ensure its smooth take-off already put in place nearly a year before Buhari left Aso Villa. There was no provision for petrol subsidy in the 2023 appropriation. The outgoing administration only steered itself and the economy across 2022 into its finishing line of 29 May, 2024, on supplementary budgeting. It had taken off all stops to the removal of petrol subsidy but lacked the courage to go further. The removal had become a fait accompli and all the government of the day awaited was that individual that would, so to speak, press the button that would set off the energy and political economy equivalent of the nuclear disaster that the removal of the subsidy on petrol was supposed to trigger.

That was the vacuum Bola Tinubu stepped up to fill and a good number of Nigerians including his political adversaries, with what amounted to a consensus opinion, agreed with him. This was not because they did not see the need for or appreciate the value of subsidy on goods and services. It was in recognition of the regime of corruption that had made nonsense of and wiped off any of the benefits that subsidies are meant for while relevant authorities looked on helplessly and often acted in complicity with the criminal syndicates in control of the Nigerian oil sector and the economy. 

Ever since the momentous decision to remove subsidy and float the naira was made, the Tinubu administration has been struggling to gain control of the economy and convince Nigerians that it did not come into office primarily to complete the demolition job Buhari started on assumption of duty in 2015. That, the annihilation of struggling Nigerians, would appear to be the ultimate solution to the problem of poverty in the country. This would appear to be the final direction of the economic policies of the present administration that have eviscerated the purchasing power of most Nigerians and drawn them below the threshold of the multidimensionally poor. 

The value of the naira is at an all-time low with the country wasting its scarce foreign exchange resources on the importation of cheap goods; unable to manufacture or produce not to say export goods and services. Industries are closing, jobs are being lost in their thousands and workers, both organised and otherwise, are demanding increasing pay that would mostly worsen the inflationary rate. The power sector is virtually dead as frequent power outage has become the norm. The promised financial and material benefits of savings from the ended subsidy expenses are nowhere to be seen, yet state governors receive their monthly allocations and promptly divert them to buy dollars that have become a means to store value in the black market. 

Desperate for funds to meet increasing responsibilities, quite a few of which are at once of dubious value and profligate impulses, the government’s main response to the intractable financial and political challenges it is confronted by is a resort to an aggressive tax regime- increasing taxes, sometimes in multiples, on goods and services. The latest of these is the ill-fated cybersecurity tax that placed the administration on the cusp of social crisis before it retreated. 

All of these things have happened in the first twelve months of this administration, leaving one with no other conclusion but that the government has failed on the major metrics of good governance. But the failure is not terminal and cannot but be temporary, as it is a record of the first year of a four-year administration. Many of the tasks the administration has set for itself and the benefits of the decisions it has so far taken have long-term gestation period. The decisions, harsh and extreme as they have been, are necessary if the future of the country is to be secure. Hopefully their gains will not remain in abeyance for too long. 

The main challenge this administration faces going forward is to demonstrate by action its readiness to live the reality in which Nigerians struggling to survive and make ends meet find themselves on a daily basis. That will not happen where it engages in wasteful spendings on its officials and projects of dubious value.