By Dr Sunday Dare
The Economist claims Nigerians dislike their President, but it’s a claim that smells of opposition and is riddled with inconsistencies.
It has become a tired, predictable ritual of external commentary—most notably from the comfortable, insulated drawing rooms of foreign publications—to look at the complex, dynamic, and pulsating canvas of the Federal Republic of Nigeria through a cracked, distorted lens.
In their rush to paint a picture of impending doom, structural paralysis, and widespread citizen despair, these overseas observers routinely traffic in sensationalist half-truths.
They love to peddle the lazy, hollow fiction that “Nigerians hate President Bola Ahmed Tinubu,” packaging localised administrative growing pains into neat, uniform narratives of national rejection.
This is not merely analytical laziness; it is an intellectual fraud. It completely overlooks the monumental, Herculean task of national salvage undertaken by the Tinubu administration since May 2023.
To understand modern Nigeria, one must look past the superficial insinuations of distant desk-bound pundits and reckon with the unyielding grit, transformative structural surgery, and profound grassroots realignment taking place across the country’s thirty-six states and the Federal Capital Territory.
To evaluate President Bola Tinubu’s stewardship fairly, one must first confront the catastrophic baseline from which this administration began exercising its mandate.
President Tinubu did not inherit a functioning, well-oiled state; he inherited a broken economic ecosystem on the precipice of total sovereign bankruptcy.
For decades, the opaque, resource-draining, and rent-seeking fuel subsidy regime operated as a monumental financial leak, feeding the insatiable greed of a parasitic portfolio oil mafia while mortgaging the future of generations. It was an unsustainable fiscal death trap that siphoned trillions away from public infrastructure, education, and healthcare into private pockets.
The Nigerian economy groaned under multiple, distorted foreign exchange windows that bred corruption and choked legitimate enterprise. Debt service-to-revenue ratios hovered near a staggering 95%, leaving the treasury virtually empty. Decades of underinvestment left critical national assets, security architecture, energy grids, and infrastructural arteries severely fractured.
To suggest that these structural cancers could be excised overnight without transitional pain is economically illiterate. Yet, rather than kicking the can down the road like his predecessors, President Tinubu summoned the political courage to confront these structural contradictions head-on.
Far from presiding over stagnation, the Tinubu administration has systematically dismantled decades of economic distortion through a series of hard-core, visionary policies that have fundamentally altered Nigeria’s trajectory. By decisively terminating the burdensome fuel subsidy on Day One, the administration stopped the bleeding of national resources, saving the federation trillions of Naira and redirecting funds toward productive capital development and fiscal sustainability.
The rationalisation of the forex market removed systemic arbitrage, boosted foreign portfolio investments, and saw trade surpluses and external reserves rebound robustly, signalling profound international investor confidence. The implementation of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has transformed the academic landscape. Hundreds of thousands of indigent students now pursue higher education without the burden of tuition, earning deep appreciation from students and parents nationwide.
By championing and securing financial autonomy for local governments, President Tinubu brought governance directly to the grassroots, ensuring allocations reach local communities without state-level bottlenecks. The upward review of the national minimum wage to a dignified floor, alongside targeted palliatives and the deployment of mass-transit Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses to cut commuter costs, has cushioned millions against inflationary pressures.
Through massive fertiliser distributions, agro-loans, and the deployment of modern farming equipment (such as thousands of tractors), the administration has laid the foundation for genuine national food sovereignty and rural economic revitalisation.
The notion that millions of Nigerians harbour blind hatred for President Tinubu collapses when you meet everyday reality. Walk into the lecture halls of federal and state universities, and you will find students and relieved parents whose educational dreams have been rescued by NELFUND.
Speak with public servants whose take-home monthly pay has been elevated by progressive wage reforms. Speak with local government chairmen and community leaders who finally have the financial independence to execute localised projects. Engage farmers witnessing targeted interventions.
These citizens recognise a leader doing the heavy, foundational lifting—someone cleaning up decades of accumulated governance debris. They know that the current reforms are the bitter medicine required to cure a chronic national ailment.
Nigeria’s political and economic ecosystem is admittedly complex, shaped by security challenges and global economic headwinds. However, external commentators’ attempt to reduce this complex sovereign nation to a caricature of helpless misery does a disservice to the truth.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu remains a master strategist whose bold, unyielding policy posture has put the nation on an irreversible path toward sustainable growth, fiscal independence, and enduring prosperity.
The narrative of inevitable rejection is exposed daily as a hollow illusion, dismantled by the tangible fruits of a renewed, resilient republic.
Dr. Sunday Dare is Special Adviser to the President on Media &Public Communications