Femi Akintunde-Johnson
It is one thing to inherit a broken economy; it is a far more devastating affair to worsen it with the speed and confidence of a man who thinks noise is strategy. On 29 May, 2023, when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took over the reins of Nigeria’s battered ship, the more optimistic among us clung to the possibility that a Lagos-proven manager had come to steady the vessel. Two years later, the joke now runs that at least Buhari took eight years to grind the poor to paste – this one used under 24 months.
Let it be said without fear or favour: we were already suffering. The Buhari administration had administered a cocktail of economic coma and fiscal hallucination, with debt overhangs, subsidy schizophrenia, and a knack for appointing square pegs to police circular holes. By 2023, public outcry over his profligacy and aloofness had risen like heat from the Sahara. We thought we’d hit rock bottom. We didn’t realise someone else had a drilling machine. Nigerians didn’t expect magic. They only hoped for a chance to breathe, perhaps a less erratic pulse in the cost of living. What they got instead was a full-frontal collision with an economic philosophy that believes pain is the first sign of progress.