TINUBU’S NIGERIA: REENGINEERING WITHOUT REGENERATION – LESSONS LEARNT AND LOST
Tinubu met Nigeria at a dead end. For twenty years every government knew fuel subsidy and multiple exchange rates could not continue, yet every government managed them instead of removing them. By May 2023, debt service took 96% of revenue and reserves were gone. The road ended.
What he did first was necessary, not heroic. He removed subsidy and unified the naira. Past governments treated subsidy as pro-poor. He treated it as a fine Nigeria had to pay for refusing to act early. That honesty is where he got it right. He stopped the bleeding.
After that he tried to make the system work better, not just smaller. This is reengineering. The Electricity Act that allows states to generate their own power, the Supreme Court ruling that local government money must go straight to local governments, the tax bills that want to collapse dozens of levies into one, the student loan fund and consumer credit scheme, are all attempts to remove needless steps.
Where this worked, people felt it. States that chose to act like challengers gained. Jigawa now tops the 2026 performance table not because it is richest, but because it owes least – just 7% of revenue. Abia moved from 36th to 2nd because it cleaned up collection. Enugu grew its internally generated revenue by 126% by making land titles digital and formal. For businesses, one exchange rate meant you no longer needed two sets of books. For local workers, direct allocation means salaries may not pass through governors.
But reengineering without changing what we actually do has limits. He saved over N4 trillion from subsidy and doubled federal allocation, but where did the money go? The 2026 index shows only Lagos, Enugu and Ogun generate more than they collect from Abuja. Eighteen of 33 states still generate less than 30% of what they get. Oil states on average rank lower than non-oil states, living on just 27% self-reliance. Extra cash went into bigger overheads and convoys, not new industries.
For ordinary people, the result is mixed. A survey of 38,312 Nigerians scores the country 3.01 out of 5 – neutral. School fees score 3.71, but finding a job 2.31, clean water 2.67, support for business 2.71, security 2.84. Government cut its own costs, but citizens did not get better service.
The deeper problem is that what we have done is catch-up, not leadership. Removing subsidy, unifying FX, harmonizing taxes – Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda did it years ago. It is necessary, but it does not make you a leader. Nigeria has become a bit better, but not different. It still sells crude, still shares cash, still imports what it can produce. It invented Nollywood, Afrobeats, fintech, but makes little money from them because it does not own power, distribution and data. Dangote Refinery exists, but we still debate petrol price instead of owning the refined products market in West Africa.
A real test of future leadership is asking simple questions we have not answered with a shared plan: Which customers are we serving today and which will we serve in ten years? Today oil buyers, tomorrow who? Through what channels will we reach them? Today through crude vessels, tomorrow through refined products and creative exports online? Who are our competitors? Today Saudi Arabia, tomorrow Morocco selling fertilizer and cars to us. Where will margins come from? Today from sharing FAAC, tomorrow from what? What skills will make us unique? Today oil trading, tomorrow what?
Only when cutting costs fails do weak companies start asking these questions. Tinubu attacked fat and lazy – subsidy and FX – but not blindness – what will make Nasarawa lithium valuable, what will make Kano agro-processing competitive, what will make Lagos a refining hub.
Nontraditional competition makes this blindness costly. Our real competitors are not America or UK. They are Jigawa that is prudent, Abia that reformed, Enugu that digitized, Ghana that runs a 24-hour port while Apapa sleeps, Kenya that runs a single window. These challengers follow opportunity. Federal government still follows familiarity – share FAAC, borrow, award contract. Youth also follow opportunity, that is why japa continues. They are voting with their feet.
And when transformation is brutal and belated, the best people leave first. The first rats off a sinking ship are the best swimmers. Doctors, nurses, tech workers left because prices jumped before wages did. Small businesses, the real treasures, were forced to cut staff because diesel hit N1,400 after subsidy removal. People are left trying to survive, not build.
To create the future you must do three things: change rules in old industries, redraw boundaries between industries, and create entirely new ones. Tinubu has not yet done these. He has not changed rules in oil from selling crude to selling refined products. He has not redrawn boundaries so that Jigawa wheat feeds Lagos flour mills under enforceable contracts, or that Enugu land reform funds technical colleges. He has not created new industries – lithium processing in Nasarawa, solar assembly in Sokoto, medical tourism in Abia.
There is not one future but hundreds. No law says Nigeria must be a follower. Getting to the future first is not just about outrunning Ghana to the same prize, it is about having your own view of what the prize is. Imagination is the only limit.
Tinubu has helped Nigeria get off the treadmill of restructuring in the sense of stopping the bleeding. But he has not helped get beyond reengineering that simply revs up today’s performance – bigger FAAC, higher IGR. Until he moves from fixing old processes to inventing new industries, stakeholders will remain on a treadmill: states with bigger allocation but same borehole and generator, businesses with bigger turnover but less real profit, youth with bigger certificates but fewer jobs, citizens with bigger hope speeches but same neutral life. Inverter is humming, generator is off, new power plant is still on the drawing board.
