Nigeria has never lacked leaders with grand promises. Our history books are littered with men who climbed the podium, swore before God and country, and then promptly treated the nation like an ATM card. Bola Ahmed Tinubu entered Aso Rock in May 2023. In just two years, Tinubu has managed to attempt what his predecessors, halo polished and robes ironed, could not deliver in eight. The same man critics swore was an albatross is now the one daring to cut the ropes strangling the nation. Such is Nigeria: the angels betray us, and the devils fix our roofs. Credit, whether we like it or not, has to be given where it is due.
The first blow landed on the petrol subsidy. For decades, this subsidy was a bloated cow nobody dared to slaughter, though everyone knew it was eating us alive. Presidents flirted with its removal like timid suitors at a village dance, then fled at the first hiss of discontent. Tinubu yanked off the mask and swung the knife. Painful? Brutal? Certainly. But the boil had to be lanced. Billions once siphoned into private pockets are being redirected. Market women cursed, danfo drivers fumed, yet beneath the grumbling was recognition: the masquerade finally fell into the gutter.
Then came the forex reform. For years, the naira lived like a Pentecostal preacher with two sermons—one for the rich, another for the poor. Politically connected merchants bought dollars at bargain rates, then flipped them for obscene profit while the masses queued at banks like beggars for crumbs. Tinubu collapsed the charade. Investors returned. Reserves rose. Suddenly, the naira began to act like a currency instead of a sickly orphan. The message was simple: the age of “na connection dey determine rate” is over. Even the sacred cows realised: pepper soup no dey exempt any cow when hunger knocks.
Fiscal prudence is another oddity on this stage. The debt service-to-revenue ratio—once a vampire draining almost 100% of our lifeblood—has dropped below 40%. Tax reforms are widening the net, finally catching big fish instead of flogging small fry. Young entrepreneurs, long condemned to borrowing from shylocks with interest rates resembling armed robbery, are now accessing loans. The streets laughed in disbelief: “Na wah o—government finally remember say poor man dey exist.”
Security, our national horror franchise, has also shifted. Terrorists and bandits are being neutralised, caches of weapons seized, hostages rescued. Anti-corruption agencies once reduced to political bulldogs have barked into real action: over 4,000 convictions, billions recovered, ghost projects resurrected from the graveyard. Nigerians blink: so this machinery could work all along? What then were the previous tenants doing—sleeping in agbada?
Infrastructure, too, has crawled out of PowerPoint presentations and into concrete. The Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road is on track, gas plants are expanding domestic supply, ports are modernising, the Electricity Act has shattered Abuja’s stranglehold on power. These aren’t just ribbon-cutting charades; they are arteries for trade, jobs, survival. As one jaded commuter said: “If dem fix these roads, na like person wey finally buy shoe after trekking barefoot for 50 years.”
Even education, that perennial disaster zone, has known calm. Two years without an ASUU strike—unheard of. Over half a million students now access loans, stipends, and bursaries. Millions of households benefit from cash transfers and school feeding programmes. It is not paradise, but the gates of hell have been nudged open just enough for air to pass.
Yet let us not be drunk on progress. Reform without accountability is pouring palm wine into a basket. Ministries, agencies, and councils must now be forced to account for every kobo. No more phantom clinics, invisible schools, or constituency projects that exist only on glossy brochures. Budgets must become contracts with consequences. Fail to deliver? Watch your allocations shrink until you either reform or rot. As the Hausa warn: “Idan ka ki jin magana, zaka ji jifa”—ignore words, you’ll feel stones.
This is Tinubu’s next test: will he wield the same courage against the entrenched gluttons in his own circle? The padded budgets passed by legislators who act more like armed robbers in agbada? The ministries where funds vanish like ghosts at cockcrow? If subsidy cabals could be tamed, can sacred cows in agbada be dragged to the abattoir? Or will the old pattern resume—where leaders roar against corruption in public but dine with it in private?
Nigerians must also confront their hypocrisy. We chant “accountability!” by day but bribe policemen by night. We curse government waste yet inflate contracts when opportunity comes. Everyone wants reform—so long as it does not touch their own pocket. As the Yoruba say, “Omo tí a kò kó, yóò gbé ilé tí a kó ta”—the undisciplined child will sell the family house. We are that child.
History rarely cares for personal saints; it cares for results. And the results—subsidy gone, forex unified, revenue stabilised, infrastructure rolling, strikes absent—are staring us in the face. The irony is brutal: the man many wrote off is doing the work our righteous leaders never dared.
If Tinubu now anchors reform to genuine accountability, he could carve his name in history’s stubborn stone. But if he chickens out—if sacred cows are allowed to keep grazing—then his two-year sprint will collapse into the same swamp of squandered hope.
He has done in two years what others failed to do in two terms. What remains is consolidation, discipline, and a refusal to play hypocrisy’s handmaiden. Nigerians, too, must decide: do we remain cynical spectators, or do we drag this fragile progress forward with vigilance? Because in the end, na accountability go separate the leader from the looter.
And if Tinubu truly wants to be remembered as the man who rewrote Nigeria’s dirge, he must prove it now. For even in Lagos traffic, LASTMA does not accept vibes—you must show your papers.
- Ishola writes from United Kingdom.
