TINUBU ECONOMIC REFORMS STILL BREED MASS SUFFERING
For Building of Mass Movement to Consistently Resist Anti-Poor Policies and Struggle for Political Power
President Bola Tinubu in his speech to mark the 65th anniversary of Nigeria’s Independence on October 1, 2025, declared that “the worst is over for Nigeria”. The Finance Minister, Wale Edun later in the same month issued an opinion article titled “Nigeria turning towards prosperity”, arguing in the same direction and stated, “the most difficult phase of our economic journey is behind us. Nigeria has turned a decisive corner”. For the vast majority of the working people and the poor whose living standards have been terribly devastated by the ruinous neo-liberal capitalist policies of the Tinubu government these claims do not correlate with their lived reality. Their life remains in a tight corner with no hope of escape, especially given the fact that Tinubu government has only continued to intensify its neo-liberal offensive.
By Peluola Adewale
Truly, there are some macroeconomic indicators which suggest improvement. For instance, officially, inflation has been slowing down since January 2025 and the exchange rate appears to have stabilized. But these are really on paper, compared with May 2023 the cost of one US dollar has risen from N464 to N1,400 today, and this massive currency collapse means that this ‘improvement’ is not reflected in the lives of ordinary people. Their situation is still much worse than how Tinubu met it on May 29, 2023.
COST OF LIVING HIGH DESPITE SLOWING INFLATION
For instance, while there is so-called slowing inflation, the cost of living still remains excruciatingly high. Besides, the positive outlook of the inflation appears more contrived than a reflection of the economic reality. The headline inflation rate which had been on the rise in 2024 suddenly dropped from 34.8 percent in December 2024 to 24.48 percent in January 2025 following the rebasing of the Consumer Price Index. It maintained a downward spiral until November 2025 when it reached 14.45 percent. However, the limitation of the revised methodology used for the rebasing was exposed in December 2025. The projections made by analysts on its basis showed that the rate of inflation would jump up to something between 31.4 and 32.4 per cent.! This is bizarre. It does not only show a reversal of the trend but also a spike. Therefore, the National Bureau of Statistics said that it would ‘normalise’ the inflation data for December 2025 following the projected spike (Punch January 12, 2026). This suggests that data were worked on to arrive at a sexed-up inflation figure of 15.15 percent officially announced for December
In any case, even if the inflation figures are correct, as the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) aptly puts it in its report on the Nigeria economic outlook for 2026, the decline only reflects “slowing the pace of cost increases rather than reversing earlier losses in real incomes.” In other words, the current price levels of goods and services are still much beyond the purchasing power of a vast majority of the working-class people, having been significantly reduced by the removal of petrol subsidy, devaluation of the naira and other ruinous economic policies of the Tinubu government. This explains why for instance despite the crash in the prices of 50kg bag rice, from between N85,000 and N95,000 in January to between N55,000 and N70,000 in December, depending on the brands and market location, many working people cannot still afford the commodity.
Besides, it is instructive to stress that the crash is as a result of the import waivers granted by Tinubu government, leading to the flooding of the market with the commodity. It is likely for the government to sustain the waivers ahead of the 2027 elections in order to maintain the price at the current level and have a subject for propaganda. However, it may lead to the foreign reserve shedding some weight, prompting the restoration of import ban after the election.
PETROL PRICE WAR
The petrol prices have also come down in the last one year. But this is as a result of a fierce price war launched by Dangote Refinery against the oil marketers who import the product in order to control the market. For instance, for Dangote, the price of a litre of petrol which sold for N1,050 in January 2025, was N739 as of January 26, 2026. Of course, this is still much higher than about N200 it sold before Tinubu’s declaration of “subsidy is gone” in May 2023. However, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has forecast that the price could rise to about N950 per litre in 2026 (Vanguard January 10, 2026).
The projected increase in the price could be as a result of the inability of Dangote Refinery to sustain the war given its impact on the company’s drive for super profit. Already, it has been reported that some oil marketers have begun to stand their ground, not following the lead of Dangote in fixing the prices. Guardian Newspaper reported in a story in January that while MRS, Dangote partner, dispensed at N739 per litre with long queues, TotalEnergies, directly opposite NNPC headquarters in Abuja, sold at N920 per litre. AY Shafa, NIPCO and NNPC Retail across the city were selling at N840 per litre (Guardian January 10, 2026).
However, it should be expected that if Dangote wins the price war, running the competitors out of the business, and attain a near monopoly status he would begin to perpetually increase the price. This is the harrowing experience of ordinary people over cement, for instance, in whose industry Dangote is the biggest player. A 50kg of cement which was selling for about N5000 in May 2023 is now over N11,000.
In any case, the plan of the government to begin the implementation of a 15 per cent import duty on petrol from the first quarter of 2026 will lead to a higher petrol price. There is also a 5 percent petrol surcharge as contained in the new tax laws and whose implementation may also commence this year.
JOBLESS GROWTH
However, World Bank, to whom, like other imperialist bodies and many pro-capitalist institutions, the Tinubu government has become a darling, has projected the Nigeria’s economic growth “to strengthen to 4.4 percent in both 2026 and 2027—the fastest pace in over a decade”. But this growth is only a partial recovery from the deep post-devaluation collapse and will be a jobless one. As the Bank itself stated the growth “is anticipated to be underpinned by a continued expansion in services and a rebound in agricultural output, with a modest acceleration in non-oil industry”.
Unlike manufacturing these sectors driving the growth do not create mass jobs. Besides, though the unemployment rate is projected to be 5.3% in 2026, it does not call for hurrah. According to PwC, “with over 70% (92% in 2023) of workers in informal jobs, most new jobs will remain low-pay and low-productivity, limiting real income gains”. It should also be recalled the government had to revise the methodology beginning from the last quarter of 2022 in order to achieve a single digit unemployment, not as a result of creating opportunities for more jobs, let alone a mass one. The revision considers any person engaged in at least one hour of work for pay or profit in the last seven days or who is temporarily absent from such work as employed. As a result, the unemployment rate dropped sharply from 33.3 percent annual average in 2020 to 5.3 percent in the last quarter of 2022 and has remained in single digit since then.
Therefore, the bad situation of the working people is so stark that even the IMF had to acknowledge in a statement in April 2025 that the so-called gains of the reforms of Tinubu “have yet to benefit all Nigerians as poverty and food insecurity remain high”, adding that it recognised “the extremely difficult situation that many Nigerians face”. And, World Bank in a report in October 2025 estimates “that 139 million Nigerians live in poverty”. This indicates a sharp increase from 104 million people in 2023 as estimated by World Bank. In other words, 35 million more people were plunged into poverty the Tinubu government in its first two years as a result of its anti-poor neo-liberal policies. However, it should be stressed that contrary to what they want the working people to believe by talking about the reality of poverty, World Bank and IMF are not genuinely concerned about the condition of working people and the poor. It is the same anti-poor neo-liberal policies, euphemistically called economic reforms, which are being implemented in line with their prescription and for which they have effusively praised the Tinubu government, which have compounded poverty and economic hardship.
FIGHTING LABOUR LEADERSHIP AND MASS RESISTANCE NEEDED
However, a much bigger blame for the current level of poverty and economic hardship goes the leaderships of the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress (TUC). It is their refusal or inability to initiate and lead a serious fight back with a consistent mass struggle which has allowed the Tinubu government to ride roughshod over the working people and the poor with its anti-poor capitalist offensive and attacks on democratic rights right from its inception. This failure of the labour leadership could be because they do not really have a fundamental opposition to the neo-liberal capitalist agenda despite the speechifying of the NLC leadership for instance. This could explain why they uncritically supported Peter Obi, who advocated basically the same ruinous economic policies which Tinubu has been implementing since he assumed office, in the 2023 presidential election. The minimum wage they chose to fight for yielded N70,000 whose value had already eroded, even before it was agreed, by inflation and high cost of living triggered by the same neo-liberal policies which they allowed to assume a field day. Sadly, it appears no lesson has been learned. This explains why beyond expressing lamentation nothing was done to build a mass resistance against Tinubu tax reform.
Therefore, there is need for a fighting labour leadership and genuinely democratically run trade unionism in order for the interests and right of workers to be adequately protected. Workers, trade union activists and left organisations have to form a campaign to achieve this. By their nature capitalist programmes, especially the neo-liberal agenda, militate against the interest of workers for decent life and conditions. We call on workers and trade union activists to mount a consistent pressure from workplaces and through different organs of trade unions on labour leaders to consistently fight and organize mass struggle against anti-poor policies and attacks on democratic rights. Any leader who is not prepared for a serious struggle in defence of working people should leave his, or her, position or be removed. Also importantly, outside the official central labour leadership, individual trade unions, activists and civil society organisations can also build struggles and a movement against anti-poor policies of the government. The #EndBadGovernance movement, arising from August 2024 nationwide protest against mass hunger and economic hardship, which though relatively small, has demonstrated the possibility of building an independent mass movement.
WORKING PEOPLE POLITICAL ALTERNATIVE
More importantly, the struggle against the anti-poor policies must be linked with the need to build a force, mass working people’s party with a socialist program, that can act before and after 2027 elections. This is in order to wrest political power from the corrupt, primitive capitalist elite and, on the basis of socialist planning, begin to judiciously use the huge human and material resources of Nigeria for the benefit of the vast majority of the population, and not the greed and super profit of a few. In today’s stormy world such a force could set a real international example of positive change.