By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Listening to some government officials speak these days, their mendacity, arrogance and the ‘you can hug the transformer’ bearing, it would seem that this country is their exclusive estate. The rest of us who they have reduced to ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ are to be seen, not heard. Even that, to them, is a privilege, for which we should be thankful. Their contemptuous ‘take it or leave it’ attitude has reduced governance to a zero-sum game where those with opposing worldviews are seen as existential threats to be crushed, even as our commonwealth is ruthlessly appropriated and deployed in securing personal power in a self-aggrandising manner that deals fatal blow to public good. Yet, the contrarians are citizens with nothing other than alternative, sometimes altruistic and even patriotic, viewpoints. We watch helplessly the brazen manipulation of our laws, rules and regulations even as institutions of state, including co-equal arms of government – legislature and judiciary – that ought to check the excesses of the executive are manipulated or weakened in order to prevent rivals from gaining a foothold.
As we inch closer to the 2027 elections, all we see is the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) with unbelievable financial war chest, riding roughshod over an opposition that is gasping for breath, literally. Nothing illustrates the unfeelingness of the President Bola Tinubu administration and its disdain for longsuffering Nigerians more than comments made recently by both the president himself and his Minister of Finance, Taiwo Oyedele. As citizens continue to groan under the weight of the president’s voodoo economic reforms and beg for mercy, he told them point-blank that lessening their burden would be tantamount to going back to the Egypt. Speaking at a forum tagged ‘Together till 2027: An Evening with Original City Boy,’ organised by Seyi Tinubu’s City Boy Movement, the Lion of Bourdillon boasted of how fulfilled he felt and still feels removing fuel subsidy on his first day in office. Taking potshots at the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, Tinubu likened any return to subsidy regime to going back to Egypt.
With zero regrets over the policy that many, including the Bretton Woods institutions that goaded him into trap, have agreed is at the root of the existential cost of living crisis, Tinubu thundered: “Nigeria will never go back to Egypt. No regrets.” He framed the 2027 polls as a battle for the soul of Nigeria, which is true. But the suggestion that his victory will not only be a win for Nigeria, but also a renewal of hope in a future of abundance cannot but be a very misleading proposition. But he was not alone in that disingenuous narrative aimed at wheedling the unwary. The foul-mouthed Vice President, Kashim Shettima, said Nigeria’s economy would have collapsed had Tinubu not taken ‘far-reaching decisions,’ that denied critics the pleasure of writing epistles on a collapsed economy from the comfort of their homes in Dubai, New York, “or in marriage with their young Moroccan wives.” As if choreographed, speaking on the same day at a press briefing of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok, Thailand, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy Taiwo Oyedele echoed the same message claiming that a return to subsidy could trigger capital flight, undermine investor confidence and push the naira to N4,000 per dollar.
This is sheer scaremongering. It is instructive that the pump price of petrol rose from about N180 per litre to N620 after Tinubu’s “subsidy is gone” declaration on inauguration day, and N1,200 a year later. Today, the price ranges from N1,370 to about N1,700. Before Tinubu took office on May 29, 2023, the official exchange rate was approximately N460 to N470 per U.S. dollar, while the parallel market traded around N760 to N770 per U.S. dollar. Today, $1 exchanges for N1,375 to N1,390.
Oyedele warned of imminent capital flight which could extend beyond foreign investors. But subsidy removal triggered capital flight. According to the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA), about 20 major multinational firms, including GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble, Sanofi, Unilever and most recently Uber, constrained by severe foreign exchange shortages, currency devaluation, and high operational costs, have either exited, scaled down their operations, or divested from Nigeria in the wake of Tinubu’s fabled economic reforms. And Oyedele knows that Nigerian big men, particularly politicians, are still seeking refuge in dollars particularly in this political silly season. He also knows that despite claims that over $50 billion in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) pledges and commitments have been secured through Tinubu’s many foreign trips and 87 investment deals, only about 4% — paltry $2.06 billion — has actually materialised into real, long-term FDI on the ground, meaning that the FDIs that have exited are far higher than what the reforms have attracted unless he is mistaken the unpredictable hot money – short-term portfolio investments – for Foreign Direct Investment, which are long term/permanent capital commitments.
It is also ironic that Oyedele spoke in Thailand, a country that heavily subsidises its rice production and supports farmers through various state interventions though it is one of the world’s largest producers of rice – roughly 33 million metric tons of paddy rice per year – and ranks second globally in exports. A local newspaper – The Nation – announced on October 20 that Thailand’s Cabinet approved five rice support and production-reform schemes worth a combined THB58.91 billion (approximately $1.75 billion) aimed at easing pressure on paddy prices as large volumes of the 2026/27 main crop enter the market in October and November. The package, according to the deputy government spokesperson, Lalida Persvivatana, combines measures to stabilise paddy prices with longer-term production restructuring under the “New Rice Economy” concept. This includes a THB40.93-billion loan scheme designed to delay sales of up to 3 million tonnes of main-crop paddy, giving farmers the option of storing their harvest and waiting for more favourable prices. The programme will also provide support for storage and maintaining rice quality. The government will bear the interest costs for participating farmers and farmers’ institutions. This is subsidy, semplicità, and don’t forget rice is Thailand’s crude oil.
These measures were announced a day after Oyedele claimed that the international community frowns at subsidies. And, perhaps, to assuage the anxieties of those who only frown at subsidies with a Nigerian face, he promised, like his principal, Tinubu, that instead of going back to Egypt, the administration will inflict more pains on the people by introducing a 5% fuel tax “when economic conditions allow Nigerians to accommodate them.” That is a shame! Was Nigeria really in Egypt before messiah Tinubu, the saviour of our time, rescued her? The answer is a categorical no. Tinubu and his government have perfected scaremongering as a statecraft. If there was anyone who met Nigeria at Ground Zero, it was President Olusegun Obasanjo.
At the time he took office in 1999, Nigeria was a pariah state with 0.52 per cent GDP growth. But in just one year, he grew it to 5.52 per cent. By 2002, it was double digits – 14.60 per cent. Under Obasanjo, Nigeria’s nominal GDP grew from about $36 billion in 1999 to approximately $268 billion by 2007. The GDP per capita rose from roughly $482 to $1,563–$1,790 and external reserves increased dramatically from $7.11 billion in 1999 to $42.30 billion by 2007. Obasanjo led Nigeria’s biggest GDP per capita rise at 268 per cent in eight years. The short tenure of President Umaru Yar’Adua maintained the upward momentum, with the peak period coming in 2014 under President Goodluck Jonathan when GDP per capita climbed to $4,363.
In all these years, the subsidy regime was intact. Yet, the economy was buoyant with a thriving middle class and the country became the largest economy in Africa. This is an Egypt that many Nigerians would gladly go back to. Truth is that the decline started in 2015 with an APC government recording the longest decline in GDP per capita. And Tinubu’s government is an offshoot of the Muhammadu Buhari administration. In almost four years, he has made the bad situation worse with his “renewed hopelessness.” That is why January 16, 2027 matters because Nigeria is also ours, not theirs alone. It requires collective effort to extricate the country from the clutches of political buccaneers masquerading as statesmen.
