By Otunba (Dr) Abdulfalil Abayomi Odunowo
Why today’s hardship may be the price of avoiding tomorrow’s collapse
From market stalls to office corridors, from bus stops to family tables, the same question keeps resurfacing:
“Are Nigerians better off today than before?”
It’s a fair question. It’s also the kind of question that can’t be answered responsibly with party slogans, selective comparisons, or social media noise. If we judge purely by day-to-day survival, many Nigerians will say “no,” and they won’t be exaggerating.
Food inflation has been punishing. Transport costs have jumped sharply. Rents are biting harder. Small businesses are struggling with higher input costs and weaker consumer demand. For many families, the conversation isn’t about “macro indicators,” it’s about whether there will be enough for the next meal, the next school bill, or the next hospital visit.
That pain is real. It shouldn’t be mocked, minimized, or explained away with technocratic arrogance.
Still, there’s another layer to this story, and it’s the part many people avoid because it’s uncomfortable: Nigeria’s pre-2023 economic structure had become increasingly unsustainable, even if it felt “stable” on the surface.
Before President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took office, the country was moving toward a fiscal wall. For years, government spending pressures rose faster than reliable revenue, while debt service costs consumed a dangerously large share of what the federal government earned. In practical terms, this meant less room for health, education, roads, security, and productivity-focused investment because more money was being used simply to service obligations.
At the same time, the fuel subsidy system had become a massive fiscal leak. By design, it rewarded consumption rather than production, encouraged smuggling and arbitrage, and created opaque payment structures that repeatedly attracted allegations of rent-seeking and fraud. Whatever anyone thinks about subsidy removal, it’s difficult to argue that the old framework was clean, efficient, or targeted at the truly vulnerable.
Then there was the exchange-rate regime. Multiple rates and administrative controls created distortions that benefited those with access and connections, while businesses that needed predictable FX for planning and imports faced uncertainty, scarcity, and cost spikes. Over time, these distortions don’t disappear, they accumulate, and the eventual adjustment becomes harsher.
So, yes, many Nigerians mistook that fragile arrangement for stability.
It wasn’t stability.
It was postponement.
The basic truth is this: no country can consistently spend beyond its means, borrow heavily to fund consumption, carry large leakages in public finance, and maintain a managed currency structure that encourages rent-seeking, then expect broad-based prosperity. Economic gravity doesn’t negotiate forever.
When the current administration moved on subsidy removal, exchange-rate unification/adjustments, and tighter fiscal positioning, the immediate shock was predictable: higher energy-linked costs, higher transport fares, rising food prices, and a general inflationary wave. But we should be honest about the timeline as well: today’s hardship didn’t appear overnight, and it won’t disappear overnight. Many of these pressures are the bill for years of accumulated distortions finally colliding with reality.
However, it’s also where government must be judged with equal seriousness. Hardship on its own is not a policy achievement. “Tough decisions” are not a substitute for results. Nigerians are entitled to ask tough, practical questions:
Where is the measurable improvement in food affordability tied to agricultural productivity, storage, logistics, and farm security?
Where is the security upgrade that reduces supply disruptions and makes rural production safer?
Where is the clear evidence of reduced waste in governance, not just speeches about it?
Where is reliable power that lowers production costs for manufacturers and MSMEs?
Where is visible discipline in public spending, including the cost of governance?
Where is targeted, transparent relief that protects workers and the most vulnerable from the worst effects of inflation?
Because here’s the political and moral bottom line: if citizens are asked to tighten belts, leadership must tighten first. Reforms rarely survive when ordinary people are pushed to the wall while the governing class appears insulated.
That is the real test before the Tinubu administration. Not simply whether reforms were “necessary,” but whether they will be followed by competence, fairness, and measurable outcomes people can actually feel.
If these reforms translate into increased domestic production, more jobs, stronger investor confidence, improved energy reliability, better security outcomes, and institutions that punish waste rather than reward it, history may remember this period as painful but corrective.
If, on the other hand, the reforms produce prolonged suffering while leakages, luxury spending, and impunity continue at the top, history will judge it harshly, and Nigerians will be right to reject it.
So Nigerians must resist two dishonest extremes:
Those who insist nothing is wrong.
Those who insist nothing can ever improve.
Nigeria doesn’t need emotional politics right now. It needs sober citizenship and relentless accountability. We must demand results, not rhetoric. We must support what works, challenge what fails, and insist that sacrifice is shared and outcomes are tracked.
So, are we better off?
For many households today, not yet.
For the country’s long-term direction, the answer depends entirely on what happens next, and on whether reforms are matched with transparency, discipline, and real, measurable relief.
Signed
Otunba (Dr) Abdulfalil Abayomi Odunowo
National President
SpeakUp Collective Nigeria (SNC)
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