Is There a Better Option to Tinubunomics?
The question facing Nigeria is not whether Tinubunomics has been painful. The data shows it has. Headline inflation rose to 34.19% in June 2024 after fuel subsidy removal and naira float, and food inflation peaked at 40.87% that same month. Petrol moved from N195 in May 2023 to above N900 per liter by late 2024, and the naira fell from N471/$ to N755/$ on the day of the float in June 2023 before weakening further. Since then, the numbers have shifted. By August 2025, headline inflation had eased to 32.15% and food inflation to 37.52%, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. By April 2026, headline inflation eased further to 15.69%, and it stood at 15.69% again in June 2026, the lowest since 2023, reflecting base effects, improved food supply, and naira stability. The naira has traded between N1,480/$ and N1,605/$ in 2025, and by June 2026 the official window had settled at N1,360–N1,525 per dollar with the parallel rate at N1,525, leaving convergence at under 2%. Petrol prices moderated to a range of N850 to N910 per liter by Q3 2025, and by June 2026 were N780 to N840 per liter as Dangote Refinery hit 650,000 bpd full capacity and global crude averaged $72 per barrel. The minimum wage was raised to N70,000 in July 2024, yet at current prices that covers about 78 to 86 liters of petrol or less than two 50kg bags of rice. The question is whether there is a better option than this market reset, and answering that requires comparing it to what came before, because the pre-Tinubu model still has political defenders who remember N185 fuel and N460 dollars.
The pre-Tinubu economy from 2015 to May 2023 was a subsidy state that managed prices instead of production. It capped petrol at N195 while landing cost exceeded N545 by May 2023, financing the gap with N4.39 trillion from the treasury in 2022 alone, according to NEITI. That was more than the combined capital vote for health, education, and works. The Central Bank ran multiple FX windows, selling dollars at N460–N465 officially while the street rate crossed N750–N770, creating a 60% to 71% arbitrage that the IMF estimated cost $1.5 billion monthly in leakages. Deficits were plugged by Ways and Means advances that hit N23.3 trillion by December 2022, and debt service consumed 96% of Federal revenue that same year. The model delivered social calm at the pump but manufactured scarcity everywhere else. Manufacturers could not access FX for inputs because the CBN’s “priority list” rationed dollars to milk and toothpicks, diesel hit N850 per liter because it was deregulated while petrol was not, and oil output collapsed to below 1 million barrels per day in Q3 2022 as theft thrived. Reserves fell to $33.2 billion by May 2023 with an FX backlog above $7 billion. The economy grew 3.1% in 2022, but it was import-dependent growth funded by debt. The model was not pro-poor. It was pro-access. You needed a Form M, not a business plan.
Tinubunomics inverted that model in two weeks. Subsidy ended on May 29, 2023. The naira was floated on June 14, moving from N471/$ to N755/$ in one day. The spread to the parallel market narrowed to under 2% by Q4 2023, killing the round-tripping that defined the old era. FAAC disbursements jumped because the N1.9 trillion in subsidy deductions vanished between June and December 2023, and total Federal revenue rose to N12.37 trillion in 2024 from N8.8 trillion in 2022, then to N15.6 trillion in 2025 on tax reforms and higher oil receipts. Debt service-to-revenue dropped to 67% by end-2024 and to 58% by Q1 2026. Foreign portfolio inflows recovered to $3.38 billion in Q1 2024 from $1.08 billion a year earlier, and reached $9.1 billion for full-year 2025 as confidence returned. The Nigerian Exchange crossed 100,000 points in January 2024 and hit 142,000 by May 2026 as banks, industrials, and oil stocks revalued. Oil production recovered to 1.61 million barrels per day in July 2025 and rose to 1.68 million bpd by Q1 2026 with improved security in the Niger Delta. The trade-off was that the state stopped absorbing shocks and households started. Multidimensional poverty already covered 133 million Nigerians in 2022, and the World Bank estimated another 7 million were pushed into poverty in 2023 from the reforms. Tinubunomics replaced fiscal risk with social risk. It ended the N4 trillion annual theft but priced millions out of transport and food.
The macro numbers now show the bleeding has stopped, and some relief has reached the market. Gross external reserves climbed to $38.4 billion by mid-2025, up from $33.2 billion at handover, and by June 2026 had crossed $50.04 billion, with the Central Bank of Nigeria confirming a peak of $50.45 billion in mid-February 2026, the highest level in 17 years. Net foreign reserves, by some private-sector estimates, grew sevenfold from their 2023 low, and Nigeria moved from balance-of-payments deficits to surplus as capital returned. The FX backlog to airlines and corporates had been cleared, according to CBN statements. GDP growth was 2.98% in Q1 2024, 3.19% in Q2 2024, and accelerated to 3.84% in Q4 2025 before printing 4.1% year-on-year in Q1 2026, driven by services, telecoms, and a revived oil sector. Inflation, though still high, is trending down. A 50kg bag of rice that was N35,000 in early 2023 rose to N88,000 in January 2024 and has since eased to N62,000–N66,000 by mid-2026 as dry-season harvests from Kebbi, Niger, and Kano entered the market and FX for imported inputs stabilized. Maize and sorghum prices are down 21% year-on-year. Yet those declines have not translated into the cost of living ordinary Nigerians expected. Transport fares remain elevated because diesel is above N1,100, and was N1,150 per liter in May 2026, while spare parts are priced in dollars. Rent in Lagos and Abuja rose 35% in 2025 as landlords repriced for inflation. School fees and medicine have not fallen. The relief at the rice stall is real, but the budget for the household is still broken. People are measuring the reforms not by GDP or reserves, but by whether their salary lasts to the third week. On that test, expectations are still unmet. The naira’s move from N465 to N1,525 is a 228% devaluation. Even with inflation falling to 15.69%, the price level is permanently higher. The N70,000 minimum wage buys 86 liters of petrol at N780–N840, compared with 359 liters at N195 in May 2023.
So is there a better option? The numbers say you cannot return to the pre-Tinubu model. Spending N4.39 trillion yearly to defend N195 petrol while grid power averaged 4,200MW for 220 million people is not policy. It is a controlled liquidation of the treasury. The subsidy state left office with $33.2 billion in reserves, $7 billion in unpaid FX, and 96% of revenue going to debt. That path ends in enforced default or hyperinflation. But Tinubunomics as currently executed is incomplete. It prices right but delivers slow. Market reforms without a supply response are just austerity. Floating the naira before refineries work, before gas pipelines flow, and before rail moves cargo means you get the inflation without the production. Dangote Refinery reached 550,000 bpd processing capacity by Q2 2025 and hit 650,000 bpd full capacity by 2026, and ANOH gas has started feeding plants, yet power generation still averaged 4,500MW in August 2025. The lag is where politics lives.
The better option is not a third ideology. It is Tinubunomics with state competence added and sequencing corrected. Keep unified FX and no fuel subsidy. They end the arbitrage that cost Nigeria roughly 6% of GDP yearly. The removal of multiple windows ended a distortion the IMF once estimated cost $1.5 billion monthly and compressed the premium spread from 71% to under 2%. Keep the ban on Ways and Means, because 51% money supply growth in 2022 is why inflation was already 22% before reforms. But ring-fence the subsidy savings and show them. The N2 trillion-plus freed annually must be visible in 10,000MW of power, not just in higher FAAC to states. Targeted production subsidies should replace consumption subsidies: subsidize the gas to fertilizer plants, not the petrol to SUVs; back a currency hedging window for manufacturers importing critical inputs, not for pilgrimages; use the tax net expansion to fund mass transit buses that make N840 petrol irrelevant to the poor. The naira float should have been preceded by 60 days of clearing the FX backlog and signaling a real export pipeline. The subsidy removal should have been paired with a funded plan to move 30% of freight off roads and onto rail within 18 months.
Nigeria’s choice is not between cheap fuel and expensive fuel. The subsidy state proved “cheap fuel” cost N4 trillion and still delivered queues. The market reset proves “expensive fuel” without power and transport is just expensive life. The better option is true prices plus a state that builds. If Tinubunomics can convert reclaimed subsidies into energy, rail, and agriculture output, then it is the better option because the old model is mathematically dead. If it cannot, the demand for the subsidy state will return, and Nigeria will relearn that you can postpone the math, but you cannot cancel it. The data now says the market reset stopped the bleeding, with reserves at a 17-year high of $50.04 billion, premium spread compressed from 71% to under 2%, inflation down to 15.69%, GDP at 3.9% to 4.1%, and rice prices falling 25%–30% from their 2024 peak. The better option is what turns that stability into a cost of living that finally meets expectations. You cannot subsidize consumption forever, and you cannot reform on price alone. Tinubunomics was necessary. The better option is Tinubunomics that builds.
