Impact Analysis of Tinubu’s 36 Months of Resetting Nigeria’s Economic Building Blocks ‎

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‎By May 2023, the Nigerian state was suffering from an excruciating fiscal haemorrhage. This was a result of a combination of accumulated loans and the cost of debt servicing skyrocketing to 96% of federally-earned revenue annually, as well as the administration of the late President Muhammadu Buhari’s constant resort to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Ways and Means advances.

‎Like all incidences of unanchored monetary injections, the overdrafts compounded the nation’s monetary inflation and worsened the national debt stock. By mid-2023, the balance had peaked at over N26.9 trn with inflation in May of the year rocketing to 22.41%.

‎Confronted with a virtually empty treasury, the then newly sworn-in President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had to also resort to Ways and Means and subsequently borrowed an additional N3.8 trn in his first six months in office.

‎However, in its first show of strategic public finance management, the then new administration securitised the backlog of the advances into a long-term bond. It publicly declared its commitment to officially halt further reliance on the CBN inflationary borrowing to fund government expenses.
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‎Fiscal Crisis Rooted in Retrogressive, Populist Economic Model
‎Nonetheless, as bad as the fiscal situation was in May 2023, we do not hold the Buhari administration responsible for the decadent state the Nigerian economy had degenerated into on the eve of the swearing-in of the Tinubu administration.

‎Our investigation of the fiscal events leading to the bewildering economic chaos of 2023, showed that the crisis was rooted in the retrogressive, populist-based economic model adopted and implemented by the three federal administrations from 1999 to 2015.

The fiscal awkwardness that characterised Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s administration (May 2010- May 2015), especially, was a poignant indication of the desecration of a potentially prosperous economy that was truncated by a combination of poor insights, lack of fiscal managerial skills, and outright exploitation and filtering away of the fiscal resources of the state.

‎To put this in perspective, we tracked the revenues which accrued to the federal government and the use to which the respective administration applied them between 1999 and 2015.

‎During former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s tenure from May 1999 to May 2007, Nigeria realised roughly $401.4bn in total crude oil revenues, and the government saved a significant portion of earnings above the budget benchmark, totalling over $9bn in the Excess Crude Account (ECA).

‎Following the same trend, the tenure of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, May 2007 to May 2010, recorded a gross oil and gas revenue of between $120bn and $130bn, while oil and gas revenue during the Jonathan administration, 2010 to 2015, rocketed to more than $454bn.

‎Despite the high revenue that accrued to the federal government, totalling $994.4bn, the three administrations left a combined external and domestic debt of about $65.49bn and a foreign reserve of $29.61bn, with a liquid component of about $28.74bn. In comparison, $875m of it was inaccessible to the succeeding Buhari administration.

‎We consider it rather disappointing that the huge federally generated revenue and the sovereign negative balance sheet bequeathed to the successor federal administration in 2015 have been aggregated with the squandering of $1.059trn in earned revenue by the three successive federal governments between 1999 and 2015.
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Jonathan’s Cardinal Fiscal Sin
‎To capture the fiscal collapse of that period, we reference one of the incidences of fiscal recklessness under the Jonathan administration, when it declared that it was forced to borrow N500bn from commercial banks to pay four months’ arrears of federal government’s staff salaries and overheads because of a severe cash crunch caused by a 50% drop in global oil prices at that time.

This, to our mind, represented a cardinal sin of fiscal administration, that is, commercial borrowing to finance recurrent expenditure.

‎This cardinal sin, without a doubt, established the Nigerian economy as debt-endemic. The succeeding Buhari administration, apparently fiscally stranded from the first day in office, embarked on a borrowing binge to keep the government running and left a legacy debt of about $34.58bn in addition to the $65.49bn debt it inherited from the Jonathan administration. Revenue accrued to the government between 2015 and 2023 was about $125bn.

‎On the eve of the inauguration of the Tinubu administration on 29th May 2023, Nigeria’s total debt, excluding Ways and Means advances, had galloped to $100.07bn. By the fourth quarter of the year, total debt had increased to $108.23bn, made up of $42.50bn external debt and $65.73bn domestic debt.

‎Subsidy Removal and Declining National Debt Under Tinubu
‎However, we must quickly note that it is to the credit of the Tinubu administration that by October 2025, just about 29 months after it assumed office, it reduced the country’s debt profile to $94.2bn from $108.23bn.

‎Coupled with this is the reduction of the debt service-to-revenue ratio from 97% in 2023 to 50% in 2025. This represents a shift in Nigeria’s macroeconomic fundamentals, with not just Nigeria’s Debt-to-GDP ratio declining to sustainable levels but also a substantial decline in the debt service-to-revenue ratio.

‎We note, nevertheless, that between then and April 2026, new debt acquisition increased the national debt to about $110.97bn, translating to new debt acquisition of up to $16.77bn. We cross-reference this against the $60bn revenue accrued to the federal government between 2023 and 2026, and the infrastructural undertakings of the administration since assuming office, and found justification for the debt in the face of constrained revenue compared to the period between 1999 and 2015.

‎Be that as it may, Nigeria’s debt-to-GDP ratio as of April 2026 stood at a low 32.3%, a reduction from 35.5% in 2025. This creates fiscal breathing room and keeps the country below international distress thresholds, reassuring foreign direct investors, helping maintain credit ratings, and preventing default risks.

‎On this count, we find these fiscal accomplishments worthy of note and commendation. This is especially so against the background of the vociferous, false accusations of high debt acquisition against the Tinubu administration from some quarters.

‎A major underlying factor in the reduction and management of debts by the Tinubu administration, among others, was the removal of fuel subsidy, which had become a fiscal monstrosity for Nigeria’s economy.

‎According to the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), the country spent a whopping $81.45bn on subsidies between 2005 and 2022. The highest spending was recorded betwee$42bnn 2010 and 2014, a four-year period, at  while a lower expenditure of $23.3bn was incurred over a seven-year period between 2015 and 2022.

In short, these subsidies equalled the country’s capital expenditure for 10 years between 2011 and 2020, thereby dwarfing allocations to all critical areas of the economy.

‎The removal of fuel subsidy in May 2023 triggered a massive boost in Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) monthly distributions to the three tiers of government. Since then, total monthly allocations shared have frequently exceeded N1.5trn post-subsidy, compared to pre-subsidy averages of roughly N650bn.
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‎This has implications for available funds for development at the state and local government levels. Before now, most of the sub-nationals have had to sustain their respective recurrent expenditure through commercial loans for salaries, allowances and a sprinkling of infrastructure they could afford within the limit of available resources.
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‎Breaking the Curse of Defending the Naira at Huge Cost
‎Nigeria’s foreign exchange ecosystem is now celebrated worldwide for its predictability and stability, directly due to the policy of harmonising foreign exchange windows. Before the Tinubu administration made that decision, Nigeria had made the defence of the local currency, the Naira, a state policy. Yet the Naira continued to depreciate against the dollar, no matter how much was spent defending it.

‎According to records, the Federal government spent $388bn to defend the Naira between 2000 and 2023. This is an average of $16.8bn yearly. The Obasanjo administration spent about $60bn to defend the Naira over eight years, while its successor, the Yar’Adua administration, spent $58bn over three years, and the Johnathan administration broke all known records, spending $145bn over five years. This contrasted with the Buhari administration spending $125bn to defend the Naira in eight years.

‎This wasted $388bn, as it were, should have been accounted for in the nation’s external reserves and deployed directly to build the economy rather than being filtered away. Despite the dollar’s deployment to defend the Naira, the exchange rate remained volatile throughout this period. The Naira still crashed from N22 in May 1999 to N460 in May 2023 at the official window, a 2100% loss, while it crashed from N80 to N780 at the black market within the same period.

‎Currently, our comparative analysis of Naira defence spending between 2000 and 2023 and between 2023 and now shows that the Tinubu administration deployed a stronger foreign exchange management model. The CBN intervention in the FX market totalled just about $7.8 bn between 2024 and 2025. Impressively, the naira gained 7.14% in 12 months with the intervention in 2025, reversing a chronic, uninterrupted decline since 2012.

‎Again, to the credit of the Tinubu administration, the unification of the foreign exchange market and the enforcement of the “Nigeria First” local content policy made foreign goods more expensive while boosting domestic manufacturing with more local inputs, thereby making Nigerian-produced goods cheaper. This has shifted Nigeria from an import-dependent economy to an export-surplus economy. This recalibration resulted in a trade surplus of over ₦ 6.69trn by late 2025.
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‎Nigeria Launches into an Era of Productivity and Fiscal Buoyancy
‎Indeed, Nigeria’s fiscal environment has come full circle. No longer can the country, by any stretch of imagination, be described as being broke. Though we acknowledge that more still needs to be done to increase the quantum of revenue generated by the federation, we nonetheless commend all policies deployed by the Tinubu administration to free hitherto constrained revenue to enhance living standards.

‎These policies also include the restructuring of the nation’s tax environment. Revenue generated from tax stood at N711bn in May 2023, but by 2025 it rose to N28.79trn, representing more than fourfold growth over the period. Also, the tax system has expanded significantly, with over 19 million taxpayers now captured and about 814,000 new corporate taxpayers added. The tax-to-GDP ratio has grown from roughly 10% to more than 13.5%.

‎One of the administration’s economic thrusts is the push for economic diversification and value addition. The administration has scored high on this. Non-oil exports reached an all-time high of $6.1bn in 2025. This historic milestone represented an 11.5% year-on-year increase from the $5.4bn recorded in 2024. Nigerian products were shipped to 120 countries, with a total of 281 different products exported.

‎Compared with historical performances, the $6.1bn 2025 non-oil export value is well above the returns from 2000 to 2014. The value of non-oil exports was a mere $600m in 2000, declined to $80m in 2003, and then increased marginally to $1.38bn in 2007. By 2010, non-oil exports were still a peripheral item in the international trade landscape, valued at $2.32bn, and showed an unimpressive increase to $2.71bn seven years later, in 2014. It was not until 2022 that non-oil exports began to record significant value, as shown in the trading template, when the dollar value of Nigeria’s non-oil exports reached about $4.82bn.
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‎The Emerging Job-Producing Economy
‎Nigeria’s economy is being transformed into a job-producing one. Major companies are actively expanding their workforces, creating thousands of jobs driven by tech digitisation, agribusiness investments, and the financial sector. A snapshot of hiring in the country shows that top companies have been hiring and the roles they are creating in key regions of the country.

For instance, Access Bank is hiring for its Entry Level Training Programme (ELTP) across retail and tech tracks in Lagos. They are also hiring specialised technical leads, such as Tech Stack Leads and Product Managers. PalmPay is actively recruiting Dealer Managers and operational specialists for its expanding fintech network, while Savings Box NG is creating new roles in credit and marketing as its e-commerce and fintech operations expand.

‎Also, companies in the oil and gas sector are employing. Chevron Nigeria Limited is running an ongoing 2026 experienced and graduate hire programmes, including Operations and Technical Trainee Programmes, creating roles for Drilling Engineers in Lagos and Abuja. ND Western Limited is hiring via their SITP Graduate Trainee Programme for disciplines such as Process and Petroleum Engineering in Delta State. Ardova Plc is recruiting for its early-career Graduate Trainee Programme focused on graduates in core engineering disciplines and business-related courses.

‎In the fast-moving consumer goods and manufacturing sector, PZ Cussons is creating production-floor and management jobs, such as Shift Leads, to oversee factory operations in manufacturing facilities like the one in Aba. Syntop Nigeria Limited is creating roles for Healthcare Assistants, focusing on medical equipment and consumables.

‎In Consulting, NGO & Marketing segments of the economy, Deloitte is actively recruiting graduates for its Tax and Legal Unit and consulting services in Lagos, while Sahel Consulting Agriculture and Nutrition Limited is hiring Programme Analysts and research specialists to support agricultural initiatives in Abuja. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is creating project management roles to support displaced populations, such as Education Project Managers in Maiduguri.

‎In addition, government programmes, including the Renewed Hope Housing, are delivering housing units across 14 states and Abuja, aiming to generate over 300,000 jobs in construction and related fields.

‎Conclusion
‎Our analysis of the 36-month-old federal administration under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu shows an adept reorientation of the fiscal structure of the Nigerian federation by the economic managers from an unbridled state-funded consumerism to an investment-based, truly diversified economy with intrinsic value. This is the principal reason global rating agencies have continued to enhance the country’s credit ratings, with a rub-on effect on growing domestic and external investor confidence.

‎More significantly, in our consideration, is the consequential attribute of job creation that the economy is transforming into. The reforms’ outcomes are scaling beyond macroeconomic stability, first, to ensure that the Nigerian federation will not experience fiscal shortages and chaos as in 2015 and 2023, and second, to address the economic needs of individual Nigerians for sustenance and sustainability.
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‎Omoniyi M. Akinsiju, PhD
‎Chairman,
‎Independent Media and Policy Initiative (IMPI).88