To mark his second year anniversary on Thursday, May 29, 2025, President Bola Tinubu rolled out his government’s assessment of its performance to Nigerians and critical partners. Mindful of the rapidly unfolding atmosphere towards the 2027 elections, Tinubu expectedly gave himself thumbs up.

Out of the three-point agenda that his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, had spelt out for the All Progressives Congress, APC, regime which Tinubu vowed to adopt (Economy, Security and Anti-corruption), he dwelt at length on the economy, his area of relative strength, but said very little about the other two.

Tinubu’s economic team has demonstrated some talent and vision in pursuing his economic model virtually dictated by the International Monetary Fund, IMF, and the World Bank, which have also backed him up with critical loans. The uncompromising implementation of the removal of petrol subsidy, floating of the Naira, partial removal of subsidy on electricity and aggressive tax reforms appear to be working.

The economic system, especially the Naira-forex balance, is stabilising. Inflation (especially food) is cooling, though still very prohibitive. The numbers as peddled by government look good but with very little effect where it really matters – the people.

Tinubu has done remarkably well in the petroleum sector, despite residual murmurings over alleged conflict of interests. Nigeria has recovered almost full domestic refining capacity. Oil theft has reduced, investment is returning and despite the fall in crude price, we export more crude. However, more needs to be done to bring more private refineries on stream and drive down the cost of fuels.

We strongly posit that the Tinubu administration has been unimpressive in the area of security, despite routine self-flattering bulletins from the Defence Headquarters which are not independently corroborated. This regime inherited Boko Haram, bandits and Fulani militant expansionists masquerading as herdsmen all over the country. Under his watch, Boko Haram has resurged and the bandits remain intractable. Two new jihadist threats: Lakurawa and Mahmuda, have invaded the country.

The “herdsmen” killings, especially in Plateau, Benue and pretty much every part of the country, have intensified despite Tinubu’s creation of the Livestock Ministry. Farmers are still being killed, communities invaded, destroyed and occupied, and indigenous people driven into refugee camps. At no other time than now have our armed forces shown lack of capacity to defend Nigeria and protect its citizens.

We did not expect the president to gloss over the current security challenges as he did. We expected him to reassure us of new measures to tackle them. We expected to hear more about the proposed Armed Forests Guard, AFG, that was recently announced, and the role the state government, local communities and all citizens are expected to play, along with the armed and security forces, to eliminate the terrorists and criminals occupying our ungoverned spaces.

As Commander-in-Chief, security is Tinubu’s number one job.