Why Nigeria’s Economic Reset Was Never About Overnight Prosperity
Nigeria’s ongoing economic reforms—popularly branded Tinubunomics—were never conceived as a magic wand for instant prosperity. They were designed as a hard reset of a distorted fiscal and macroeconomic system, not a populist shortcut to abundance.
That was the central argument advanced by Budget Office of the Federation Director-General, Tanimu Yakubu, in a pointed intervention into the country’s increasingly emotional economic debate.
His message was blunt: much of the criticism surrounding Tinubunomics is built on arithmetic spectacle, not economic logic.
The Arithmetic Illusion Distorting Public Debate
A defining weakness of Nigeria’s current fiscal discourse, Yakubu argues, is the careless circulation of massive headline figures—₦150 trillion, ₦170 trillion, ₦180 trillion—without any serious understanding of what those numbers actually represent.
In many viral narratives:
- Revenue is confused with cash
- Borrowing is mislabelled as income
- Federation-wide collections are treated as if they belong entirely to the Federal Government
These are not academic nuances. They are the bedrock of public finance.
Nigeria operates a federation system, where revenues are shared across federal, state, and local governments. Aggregating all inflows and asking “where did the money go?” ignores constitutional realities.
In plain terms: much of the money critics claim was “spent” never existed as spendable cash in the first place.
Subsidy Removal Did Not Create a Cash Bonanza
One of the most persistent misconceptions surrounding Tinubunomics is the belief that fuel subsidy removal unlocked a massive pool of idle cash.
It did not.
Subsidy reform, Yakubu explains, plugged a fiscal leak. It stopped an unsustainable drain on public finances. The gains from that reform materialise gradually—through:
- Reduced deficit pressure
- Improved budget discipline
- Better fiscal targeting
Not through sudden, discretionary windfalls.
In other words, subsidy reform closed a hole; it did not create a vault.
Debt Numbers and the Exchange-Rate Trap
Another major distortion lies in the interpretation of Nigeria’s rising public debt figures.
A significant portion of the increase in naira-denominated debt, Yakubu notes, is not the result of fresh borrowing. It is an exchange-rate revaluation effect.
When the naira adjusts, the local-currency value of existing dollar-denominated debt automatically rises. Treating this accounting adjustment as new borrowing is not just misleading—it is economically incorrect.
This distinction matters, especially in a country where debt narratives strongly influence investor sentiment and public trust.
What Tinubunomics Is—and What It Is Not
Tinubunomics, as articulated by the Budget Office, is not a promise of instant abundance. It is a macro-fiscal reset executed under severe inherited constraints, including:
- Heavy debt-service obligations
- Rising security expenditures
- Legacy arrears
- Constitutional revenue-sharing rules
Its real objectives are structural, not theatrical:
- Restoring price signals
- Strengthening revenue administration
- Rebuilding macroeconomic credibility
- Repricing the public balance sheet
- Protecting the most vulnerable during adjustment
This is economic surgery, not a stimulus sugar-rush.
Reframing Accountability: From Noise to Numbers
True accountability, Yakubu insists, cannot begin with social-media arithmetic.
It must focus on:
- Federal retained revenue, not gross federation inflows
- Actual financing sources, not borrowed illusions
- Expenditure composition, not headline totals
- Measurable outcomes, not viral outrage
Anything else, he argues, is economic theatre.
The BRANDECONOMY Take
Though the Tinubu Government insists that Nigeria’s reform moment demands financial literacy as much as political patience, it should not be lost on the administration that “the morning shows the day” Tinubunomics has been very painful, imperfect, slow and leading to no clear-cut measurable milestones. Thus, judging it through arithmetic and empirical indices only deepens mistrust.
Structural reforms are rarely generous in the short term. They are designed to restore credibility before they restore comfort, however credibility seems lacking at the moment.
If the administration says the real question is not “Where is the instant abundance?, then it is not out of place to ask, “Where’s the sustenance? Where’s the blueprint leading to, what are the milestones to progress?” It would appear, at this point, that only the administration can see the promised land. The people need to see and feel ‘workings’ not endless assurances that are obviously falling short
