Different folks, different strokes, goes that rhyming, still rather jaded cliche. But it is as sharp as any to paint the government/opposition contrast towards 2027.
The one reeled out stats to prove potent antidote is here to fix endemic problems. The other serenade the economic doom, as treasured electoral tool.
A soapy serenata of doom and gloom is, after all, much easier than rigorous policy alternatives: to gyp the naive, rile the angry and push the pressured!
How’re they so blest, you’d say! Trouble, though: the situation is dynamic. What if the government’s stats bloom into a pleasant reality? Checkmate opposition? Ha!
Still, before conking the opposition tactics — or none — perhaps the government too, as opposition, would have trodden that same cynical path!
Remember how the Lai Mohammed ACN, and later, APC formidable machine sent the Jonathan (dis)order running helter-skelter, until it electorally ran it out of town in 2015?
Different folks, different strokes!
Still, given the impressive stats President Bola Tinubu reeled out in his October 1 broadcast, there seems a clear difference between the Jonathan plumbing; and the sense of a new rise — with very verifiable landmarks — which the speech presented.
True, the president sold a dummy, which only the alert could have beaten: that bit about Nigeria having, in 1960, 120 secondary schools to a pupil population of 130, 000; aside only two tertiary institutions: the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, and the University of Ibadan.
Sixty-five years later: a virtual, if welcome, explosion: 274 universities, public and private, 183 polytechnics, 236 colleges of education, 23, 000 secondary schools.
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But what about the parallel explosion in population: 45 million (1960) to an estimated 237.5 million (2025)?
Leaving out the youth population now clanging for school space kills any logical analogy between now and 65 years ago. With that clear gap — deliberate or coincident? — we can’t say whether educational access is better today than in 1960.
But beyond that flabbiness, most others stats are tight. They indeed give cause for hope — not happenstance hope, but hope that logically crowns gruelling, hard work.
Indeed, Premium Times just ran a fact-check through the president’s claims; and the nine were deemed true.
That second-quarter 2025 posted a 4.23% growth (against IMF’s projection of 3.4%), the highest in four years; that inflation, at 20.12% in August, has been the lowest in three years; that Nigeria’s foreign reserves, at US$ 42.03 billion, are the highest in six years: since 2019; that tax-to-GDP ratio has risen from less than 10% in 2023 to 13.5% in just over two years.
The remaining claims: aside surplus in five consecutive trade quarters grossing N7.46 trillion by Q2 2025, manufactured exports from Nigeria soared by 173%; crude oil production is up: from one million in 2023 to 1.68 million barrels-a-day in 2025; a solid mineral boom: coal mining leaping from -22% to 57.5%; better sovereign credit profile by global rating agencies; the CBN cut interest rate, if marginally, for the first time since 2020.
No one — so far — has fact-checked the president’s claim that rail infrastructure has grown by 40% and water transportation by 27%. But unlike pre-2015 when hardcore infrastructure were rare, rail and big road legacy projects are common fare.
The president said the 284-km Kano-Katsina-Moradi standard gauge rail was nearing completion. That done, the next step is to link Ibadan with Abuja, and modern rail, linking coastal Lagos-Ibadan-Abuja-Kaduna-Kano-Katsina-Maradi would be a reality!
That itself would be the deepest penetration of modernized rail since 1960. With that should come big import freight from Lagos to Nigeria’s landlocked neighbours: Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, etc.
That trade boon should translate into rail, as a transport sub-sector, contributing more to GDP. The sturdier the GDP, the doughtier the local economy, the stronger the Naira, the lower the inflation, the higher the standard of living and the lower the poverty rate.
These indices, other things being equal, signify an economy on the rebound. In any case, that’s the picture the ruling party is pushing.
But the opposition — in full panic mode or wilful delusion? — would rather luxuriate in the current blight; and wish it continued, at least for their 2027 electoral gain. That, wholesale, appears their strategy so far.
Take Peter Obi, the most prominent pretender, among the lot, to subversive data. Obi merrily hanged himself with own words, that same noose he confected for others.
Hear him: “By the end of 2007, our total debt was about N2.5 trillion, only 10% of GDP, after President Obasanjo’s government secured debt forgiveness of over US$ 30 billion. By 2014,” he added, “Nigeria had become Africa’s largest economy and was primed to achieve middle-income status.”
Yet, by 2015 — with “Africa’s largest economy”: by re-basing, that statistical wonder, by the way! — 12 states, out of Nigeria’s 36, could not pay salaries! It’s yet another manifestation of Obi’s notorious plastic approach to issues!
But the story here is not even that statistical plasticity. It’s Obi identifying with the Obasanjo ancien regime, routed under fall guy Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, as his prescribed future paradise!
The Obasanjo-era “reforms” posted dire infrastructural deficits. One reason: the US$ 12 billion, paid the Paris Club to cancel Nigeria’s US$ 31 billion debt could have been invested in infrastructure, which should have spurred the economy — a terrible opportunity cost. But post-2015 reforms are changing that infrastructure decay.
If you doubt, check out — all post-2015 — the Lagos-Ibadan standard-gauge rail and revamped expressway; and the Second Niger Bridge, into Obi’s South East homeland, which never leapt off campaign videos, all through the PDP years! Without roaring infrastructure, how can you grow an economy?
Beyond cynically skewing statistics to game the unwary; and whining over challenges instead of providing clear solutions, Obi’s thinking is bland on almost all scores!
Atiku Abubakar? The 2023 self-proclaimed “northern” candidate, strutting in glorious ordinariness which he mistakes for political exceptionalism, is busy denying non-issues instead sharing fresh ideas — which he never had — with the polity.
The other day, he would protect Yoruba interests as president. The next, he would stand down for a younger candidate! When comes the next gush of denials? Gosh!
Former President Jonathan? The good riddance to the PDP-era bad rubbish, with his electoral spanking of 2015, is busy shopping for a sure ticket, from either PDP or its clone, ADC, to re-contest in 2027! What grand achievement would he campaign on?
To be sure, the Tinubu order would face close and tight scrutiny on how harsh neo-liberal tactics have enhanced its “progressive” essence. But, from verifiable stats that the president just rolled out, its harsh surgery appears restoring the patient. With far lower food and transport inflation, it might even be singing a redemption song!
That seems more solid than self-professed people’s friends, but really fiends, praying — and fasting! — that hardship endures, for them to stand any electoral chance!
What satanic — and panic-prone — strategy!
