Tag: Nigeria

Today’s article is an adaptation of the keynote speech this columnist delivered at the Southwest Integrity Summit 2025 held in Osogbo, on 17 November. The summit was convened by the National Chairman of the Integrity Group of Nigeria (The Renewed Hope Ambassadors), Dr. Oke Idawene, and hosted by the Osun State branch of the group headed by the state Chairman, Comrade Salam Mustapha Olamilekan.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has demonstrated that, however much a person may have noble and workable economic ideas, they must first acquire the requisite political power in order to be able to put into practice those great ideas. So, he made huge intellectual, psychological, emotional, physical, social and material investments into seeking presidential power. Once he got it through pragmatic patience and strategic sacrifice, the President acquired the ability to institute economic policies he believed could enhance the welfare of Nigerians.

As is now common knowledge, then-presidential candidate Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu promised to remove fuel subsidy; and he kept that promise right from his inaugural address as president on 29 May, 2023. The President also embarked on the floating of the naira and the unification of the multiple exchange rate regime. These policies led to a fall in the value of the naira and high inflation.

Notwithstanding, some economists believed that the policies were sound, and would eventually stabilise and generate growth in the economy. However, critics condemned the President for being hasty in the introduction of the policies. This argument was countered by those who thought that delaying the implementation of the policies would have given the fuel subsidy cabal and exchange rate racketeers the opportunity to re-strategise and mobilise against the corrective economic policies to protect their obscene privileges.

President Tinubu acknowledged the fact that the economic policies had come with some unintended pains. He also assured Nigerians that those pains were like the pangs of childbirth which are normally followed by pleasure after safe delivery. The President therefore used every opportunity he got to plead with the citizens to be patient and to show understanding.

To ease the pains, the government introduced Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses; CNG vehicle charging centres; the monthly award to federal civil servants of thirty-five thousand naira for six months; the upward review of the minimum wage of federal workers from N30,000 to N70,000; the increase in the salary of judges; the approval and signing into law of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) to ensure that nobody who desired to acquire tertiary education was prevented from fulfilling the noble dream due to lack of funds; and the introduction of the Tertiary Institution Staff Support Fund (TISSF), a loan scheme under which a beneficiary could get up to ten million naira, subject to the ability to repay.

Moreover, in line with the proverbial principle that when the issue of food has been sorted out, poverty abates (“Tí oúnje bá kúrò nínú ìsé, ìsé bùse.”), the government put in place a number of policies. These include the temporary removal of tariffs on grains and essential food items; enhancing irrigation facilities and improving water resource management; increasing agricultural mechanisation; enhancing access to credit for farmers through the Bank of Agriculture; establishment of the National Commodity Board; addressing the challenge of insecurity through the establishment of Forest Guards; introduction of dry season farming; and the creation of the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development, among other measures.

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In addition, undergirded by the principle that “Health is wealth,” the government removed tariffs on some imported pharmaceutical products to halt the worrisome rise in the cost of medicines. The government also embarked on the direct importation of essential medicines to ensure their availability and affordability. Furthermore, cancer centres were established in the six geo-political zones to reduce the need for medical tourism and relieve the pressure on the country’s foreign exchange reserves. 

Meanwhile, power supply had become a huge challenge to the nation’s economic well-being. The unstable supply or very high cost of electricity had aggravated inflation, and made goods produced in Nigeria more costly than the same kind of goods imported from abroad. To address this and related problems, on 8 June 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed the Electricity Bill 2023 into law as Electricity Act, 2023.

In a June 2023 article titled “Commentaries on the Electricity Act, 2023,” Ayo Salami, Partner & Head, Energy and Natural Resources Group, at KPMG in Nigeria, noted: “Section 63(2)(b) allows persons to operate an undertaking for generation, transmission, distribution, supply, and sale of electricity within a State, pursuant to the law enacted by the House of Assembly of the relevant State …” This means that a state, a group of private investors or individuals can participate in the generation, transmission, distribution, supply and sale of electricity and other renewable forms of energy in this country today.

In fact, in a 16 October, 2024 Nigerian Tribune report titled “I generate about 15% of Nigeria’s electricity – Davido’s father, Deji Adeleke,” Adam Mosadioluwa stated: “Adedeji Adeleke, the father of award-winning Nigerian artiste, Davido, has revealed that his company, Pacific Energy, generates about 15% of Nigeria’s electricity. … The billionaire businessman highlighted his investments in the nation’s power sector, particularly focusing on his thermal power plant, which is expected to become fully operational by January 2025.”

So, the next time you find a post on social media claiming cynically that President Tinubu said that if he does not provide stable electricity in Nigeria, the electorate should not vote for him for a second term in office, let the critics know that, in fact, rather than merely providing Nigerians with fish, the President has, as the proverb goes, taught them how to fish. As such, if the stakeholders do not seize the opportunity for electricity sufficiency provided through the liberalisation of the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI), that would be their fault, because as our elders say, “Alágemo ti bímo rè tán, àìmòójó dowó rè.” (‘The chameleon has already performed its duty of giving birth to and enabling its child; if the child does not know how to dance, that’s the child’s fault.’)

Moreover, with respect to the “Crude-for-Naira Deal”, a piece in The Nation newspaper of 6 October, 2025 reported the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, as stating: “The sale of crude oil and refined products in Naira has officially begun as directed by the Federal Executive Council. This initiative marks a bold step towards economic sustainability and currency stability.”

A 10 April, 2025 report in The Nation newspaper also quoted the Federal Ministry of Finance as stating: “The Crude and Refined Product Sales in Naira initiative is not a temporary or time-bound intervention, but a key policy directive designed to support sustainable local refining, bolster energy security, and reduce reliance on foreign exchange in the domestic petroleum market.”

With respect to blocking revenue leakages in the mining sector, President Tinubu has been reported to have directed that all new mining licences must have local value. That is, licences would be issued only to those who give a commitment to process, locally, minerals they extract in Nigeria, as a means of boosting local employment opportunities, rather than export them in raw form.

This range of policies and many related ones have cumulatively had a positive impact on the Nigerian economy. This has earned positive ratings by various international institutions, resulting in increased confidence in the Nigerian economy. In an 18 November, 2025 story in The Nation, the Controller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, was reported to have said: “In the first half of 2025, Nigeria’s trade with other African countries reached N4.82 trillion – an increase of more than N600 billion compared with the previous year.”

Moreover, internally, state governments have been receiving increased allocations from the federation account and have been able to pay their employees more easily. Dr. Muda Yusuf, CEO, Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprises (CPPE), commenting on the Nigerian economy on 21 November, 2025 in a TVC news interview said: “We’re heading in the right direction.” He noted that there was a stable and even marginal rise in exchange rate, steady decline in inflation, and robust external reserve (which according to the Central Bank, has risen to $46.7 billion as at 14 November, 2025).

Dr. Yusuf further observed that the impact of these achievements is already visible in the drop in the prices of consumer goods. For example, a 50kg of rice which was around N120,000 last year, has fallen to around N58,000 this week. He also cited the price of a street motorcycle (Okada) which was around N1,200,000 last year, but is around N800,000 now. Checks with sellers of food items and motorcycles confirm a remarkable reduction in prices. The reduction in the prices of medicines has also been confirmed.

To sustain the positive economic trend the nation is experiencing now, it is important to implement robustly the 11 July, 2024 Supreme Court landmark judgement affirming the autonomy of Nigeria’s 774 Local Government Councils. This would enhance the optimal participation of a significant proportion of Nigerians living at the grassroots level in the economic life of the nation and consolidate the efforts of the federal government. It would also minimise the alienation and disengagement of a large section of the citizens from the government. This alienation has made it attractive for them to exchange their votes for a piece of gala, a can of malt and N500 or N1,000.

A more intense engagement of the youth in the economic progammes to the government would also be immensely invaluable in ensuring the continuity of the well-directed policies. The youth are energetic, resourceful and exceptionally courageous. They therefore constitute invaluable components of any enterprise. It is for this reason that the former Lagos State Governor and former Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), asked recently in Lagos, why our youth have not been sufficiently oriented towards participation in the affairs of the society at large, such that there would be students wings of political parties even in our universities. These exist in the Botswana political culture.

Meanwhile, even some of the traditional critics of President Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are acknowledging the improving economic situation of the country, as the Renewed Hope Agenda is steadily progressing towards full actualisation. It is this happy trend that the factional National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Kabiru Tanimu Turaki (SAN), a former Minister of Special Duties, set out to disrupt when he invited United States President Donald Trump and other leaders to invade Nigeria, to help PDP to resolve its internal crises and ‘save democracy’.

By Oladoja M.O

There comes a point in every nation’s existence when it must interrogate the very myths that forged its being, and it appears Nigeria has reached that juncture. “One Nigeria” a slogan as old as our independence, repeated in classrooms, parliaments and pulpits alike has gradually morphed from a patriotic creed into a hollow incantation that adorns speeches, but no convictions; a rhetoric that unites in sound but not in substance. And yet, like an overused balm, it is still generously applied to wounds that have long become septic.

When the British, in their cartographic arrogance, decided that the roaring rivers of the Niger and Benue could somehow dissolve the ancestral boundaries of a hundred nations into a single name, they planted both a promise and a peril. The promise was the strength of size, the illusion that numerical vastness equals greatness. The peril, however, lay in presuming that different civilizations with their own gods, economies, memories and destinies could be hammered into a coherent polity without a shared philosophy of being. What emerged was less a federation of equals than a fragile patchwork held together by coercion and cliché.

History is replete with examples of states that mistook enforced coexistence for genuine unity. The Soviet Union once imagined that the subjugation of difference was the same as solidarity until it collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. Yugoslavia thought nationalism could be suppressed by ideology until ethnic passions burned Sarajevo into ash. Even Sudan, our continental cousin, insisted on an indivisible state until the centre could no longer contain the centrifugal cries for dignity and recognition, and the South tore itself free in a baptism of blood. Each of these polities preached “oneness,” but none could manufacture mutual trust. Unfortunately, Nigeria’s situation, though cloaked in democratic pretensions, bears unnerving resemblance.

Decades after independence, we continue to stagger under the illusion of unity while exhibiting every symptom of division. Our politics remains a theatre of tribal anxieties. Our economy, a contest of regional grievance. Our institutions, battlegrounds of exclusion and suspicion. Every census, every election, every policy debate collapses into the arithmetic of ethnicity. We have created a federation in name, but a feud in practice. The Nigerian state, like a badly tuned orchestra, plays the anthem of unity while each instrument screams in its own discordant key.

What has deepened the tragedy is not merely that we are divided, but that we have learned to romanticize our dysfunction. The myth of “One Nigeria” has been elevated to the level of moral blackmail, as though to question it is to commit heresy. Yet, the facts are unflinching. From the coups and counter-coups of the 1960s, to the Biafran war that drenched this soil in youthful blood; from the endless agitations of the Niger Delta, to the violent insurgencies of the North, and the secessionist murmurs of the East, we have been a nation perpetually negotiating its own existence. Even now, in the 21st century, the markers of mistrust remain, only deepened by new forms of betrayal. We have witnessed, time and again, how national security efforts are quietly sabotaged by regional sympathies where the pursuit of peace against terror becomes a political chessboard, and those who menace the state are garlanded as champions in their communities. In some quarters, it has almost become an identity to excuse barbarity in the name of kinship, to embrace those who burn the nation’s fabric as heroes rather than outlaws.

There are regions where individuals, through their character and conduct, have dragged the nation’s image into global disrepute, staining the diplomatic standing of millions, and forcing the country to spend years rebuilding bridges of trust with the international community. Elsewhere, the spirit of entitlement festers a belief that governance is a turn-by-turn inheritance that “it is our time now,” and so positions of influence must rotate along bloodlines and geography rather than merit. Even the recent rumblings of military adventurism, the whisper of coup sympathies and their architects seem disturbingly traceable to predictable corners of the polity, confirming that our divisions have not merely survived time; they have evolved.

Thus, we remain a country trapped in its contradictions: differential justice, uneven development, selective outrage, and an ever-widening gulf between the governors and the governed.

How then do we continue to recite the catechism of unity with straight faces when the “one” in “One Nigeria” has become a question rather than a statement? For unity cannot be decreed by constitutions nor enforced by soldiers; it must be earned by fairness, equity, and mutual respect. When a nation’s prosperity is monopolized by a few, when power circulates within predictable bloodlines, when regions are treated not as partners but as provinces, the rhetoric of unity becomes an insult to intelligence.

We deceive ourselves with patriotic songs while ignoring the dissonance in our reality. The world is changing; nations are redefining themselves in pursuit of justice and balance. Ethiopia, after decades of internal conflict, restructured its governance to reflect its ethnic federalism. The United Kingdom, once rigidly centralized, conceded autonomy to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to preserve its union. Even Belgium, split by language and identity, discovered that devolution was the price of stability. In each case, political maturity triumphed over sentimental unity. Why then should Nigeria, with its far deeper pluralities, cling to a system that has neither delivered prosperity nor peace?

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It is at this critical juncture that Nigeria must summon the courage to confront itself, not with nostalgia or denial, but with truth and pragmatism. The time has come for an honest national conversation, a sober rethinking of our structure, values, and vision. We must ask: What truly binds us, and on what terms should we continue this union? This is not a call to disintegration, but to redefinition.

If genuine unity is to be sustained, it must be built on a framework that reflects our peculiarities rather than suppresses them. Perhaps it is time to revisit the foundations of our federalism to decide, through dialogue and consensus, whether the present centralized model still serves our collective good.

If what we need is a restructured federation that grants greater autonomy to regions, then let us pursue it with sincerity. If what we require is a return to a confederation that allows each region to govern according to its social and economic realities, then let the people decide it freely. And if, after exhaustive dialogue, it becomes clear that coexistence itself has become unsustainable, then perhaps peaceful dissolution negotiated with maturity and justice may be the truest form of unity left to us.

Whatever the outcome, silence and pretense can no longer suffice. We must choose between a future defined by courage or a decline defined by denial. It is time to stop pretending that unity is sacred when it has become suffocating.

If we refuse to confront this reckoning, we risk learning, as others have, that when unity becomes a prison, freedom will break the walls. For now, the cracks are visible in our rhetoric, our regions, our republic. Whether they widen into collapse or are sealed with courage depends on our collective honesty. But one thing is certain: the chant of “One Nigeria” will not save us if it continues to mean nothing more than silence in the face of inequality.

Until we replace illusion with justice and ideology with sincerity, we will remain what we are a country yoked together by history, but not joined by purpose.

•Oladoja M.O writes from Abuja and can be reached via mayokunmark@gmail.com