A monster is haunting Nigeria – the monster of harmful policies and bad governance.
The history of prosperous societies is never complete without incorporating the history of protests. Nigeria is not new to this. We have done it with the colonial masters and even the military dictators. In present-day Nigeria, it is the incumbent government against the oppressed citizens. And it is the latter alone that can demand change.
Since their rise to power a decade ago, the APC government has imposed harmful neo-liberal policies, mostly proposed by the Bretton Woods institutions. The IMF and World Bank advisers will not dare propose such policies in their respective home countries. The policies have brought nothing but economic hardship to Nigerians. But it is unfair to solely blame these agencies, as they are only looking out for their own interests and those of their imperialist masters.
This government has used indefensible fiscal policy arguments to reduce public expenditures. It has removed subsidies across sectors, including electricity, petroleum, agriculture, education and many more. Fuel prices are rising to N1,300 per litre as depots run dry, despite the claims that fuel subsidies have returned.
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Similarly, the incoherent monetary policies have created a currency crisis. Coupled with the increased money supply, borrowing costs and the unification of the floating exchange rate market, the CBN allowed the naira to depreciate against the dollar to an uncontrollable level.
Under this administration, the Nigerian economy has never looked worse. No one is left untouched. Household adults and children, public sector workers, civil servants, and private sector workers are hungry and experiencing unbearable economic hardship. Food, clothing, water, and shelter are scarce. People are leaving their families to survive alone. Many are eating animal food and even grass.
Similarly, business owners of all sizes, micro to large, are finding it difficult to operate in this environment. Even billionaires like Otedola are writing long epistles about the present situation. It is a race to the bottom.
The scary part is that the Tinubu-led administration is just starting its second year in office. Their trial-and-error policies are currently being tested under four simultaneous budgets. They have created a difficult environment for economic activities to happen. People are suffering.
The petroleum industry’s failure to invest in critical sectors is evident. The sector’s low productivity has forced the country to borrow externally, which has increased the government’s obsession with IGR from all tiers. Although refineries are not operational, billions are spent on them annually, as are gas flaring and the importation of sub-standard energy products.
The petroleum sector is also plagued by corruption. Even Dangote has raised concerns about the importation of bad petroleum products, racketeering from Malta, and widespread corruption in the sector.
In fact, the government is choosing to victimise Dangote for achieving what it was incapable of doing. Aside from the corruption claims, he said the government only owns seven per cent of his refinery instead of the 20 per cent that was announced in 2022.
Dangote’s generosity did not go unnoticed — he offered the government the chance to nationalise his newly built refinery. Buying it would definitely ease the ongoing hardship. This is one more evidence that they are not short on options to change the present situation.
But instead of adopting decent solutions, they invite community leaders to Aso Rock to manipulate the people with religious texts, gifts, and deceptive words. These people return to their communities to justify the government’s agenda. Saying it will bear fruit someday. It will not. No amount of time can make harmful policies look good. They just want people to get used to this style of hardship.
As Marx once noted, “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” The administrators of the Tinubu government are obsessed with taxation over development, and this obsession has become a priority for them. Instead of improving public services with the tax revenues, they spend them on personal luxuries. These include exotic cars, aeroplanes, yachts, religious tourism, medical tourism, extravagant feeding, building presidential palaces, and more.
All the tangibles have evaporated into the thin air; all that is divine is vandalised. This APC government has demolished the social structures that provided stability and security to the people as was before. In their place, they have created a system of public exploitation, selling off public assets to themselves and more taxes. The relentless pursuit of profit and power has ended the public investments that held communities together. The private jet business has tripled to 157 owners in 2024 as against public transportation.
Their policies only favour the wealthy elite. The Lagos Boys of this regime will not accept responsibility for this failure because they feel entitled. They expect people to remain docile, thinking they know better than everyone. They claim their policies will eventually benefit the masses; on the contrary, these measures only increase suffering.
The people are already exercising their constitutional rights—protesting the economic monster that is oppressing them. The opposition party leadership needs to show support for this. Remaining docile only endorses everything the APC government is doing.
Borrowing from Marx, Nigerians have nothing to lose but the cruel chains of economic policies imposed by the Tinubu-led government.
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