THREE years ago, on May 29, 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu stood before the nation and uttered three words that would come to define his presidency: “Subsidy is gone.” Delivered with the certainty of a field marshal announcing victory, the declaration was presented as the opening chapter of a national rebirth, one of fiscal discipline, economic reform, and the much-publicised ‘Renewed Hope Agenda’.
Three years later, as Nigeria enters the fourth and final year of Tinubu’s first term, the question confronting the nation is both simple and profound: what exactly has been renewed? More importantly, has hope been revived, or have the hopes and dreams of millions of Nigerians been quietly interred beneath the crushing weight of economic hardship and political manipulation?
To answer these questions honestly, one must first acknowledge the ruins Tinubu inherited. The Buhari administration bequeathed a fragile economy burdened by unsustainable fuel subsidies, ballooning debt, rampant insecurity, and a political economy distorted by rent-seeking interests. The subsidy regime had become a voracious monster, consuming trillions of naira while enriching a privileged cartel. Its removal was neither irrational nor unexpected.
When more than 100 million citizens live below the poverty line, poverty ceases to be a statistic; it becomes an atmosphere – thick, suffocating, and inescapable. It hangs over markets, classrooms, hospitals, and homes. It shapes decisions, limits possibilities, and slowly erodes dignity. Yet, economic hardship alone does not define the trajectory of this presidency. Equally troubling is the political environment in which these policies have unfolded. The rhetoric of the ‘Renewed Hope Agenda’ speaks of inclusion and national rebirth. The reality has often suggested something else: a shrinking civic space and a growing impatience with dissent.
What transformed a necessary reform into a national trauma was not the policy itself, but the absence of any meaningful safety net. Millions of Nigerians awoke the morning after subsidy removal to discover that their purchasing power had evaporated overnight. The promised palliatives arrived late, inadequately, or not at all. Citizens were asked to endure sacrifice, but were given little evidence that government was sharing in the pain.
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Inflation, already a persistent affliction, has since metastasised into a full-blown economic cancer. By early 2026, headline inflation remained stubbornly above 30 per cent, while food inflation climbed even higher. The removal of fuel subsidies unleashed a chain reaction across the economy. Transportation costs surged. Food prices followed. Rent skyrocketed. Everyday necessities slipped steadily beyond the reach of ordinary Nigerians.
At the same time, the Central Bank’s currency reforms, theoretically defensible on paper, have in practice produced a level of volatility that has unsettled businesses and devastated household savings. Before May 2023, the naira exchanged at roughly ₦460 to the dollar. Today, it hovers between ₦1,400 and ₦1,500 in the official market, and often fares worse elsewhere. For a nation heavily dependent on imports, this is not merely a monetary adjustment; it is a relentless assault on living standards.
The social divide created by these policies is impossible to ignore. On one side stand the politically connected, the rent-seeking elite, and those insulated by access to dollar-denominated wealth. On the other stand millions of ordinary Nigerians: civil servants whose salaries have remained stagnant, pensioners whose savings have been ravaged by inflation, and young graduates whose aspirations of middle-class stability now sound like stories from a vanished age.
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When more than 100 million citizens live below the poverty line, poverty ceases to be a statistic; it becomes an atmosphere – thick, suffocating, and inescapable. It hangs over markets, classrooms, hospitals, and homes. It shapes decisions, limits possibilities, and slowly erodes dignity.
Yet, economic hardship alone does not define the trajectory of this presidency. Equally troubling is the political environment in which these policies have unfolded. The rhetoric of the ‘Renewed Hope Agenda’ speaks of inclusion and national rebirth. The reality has often suggested something else: a shrinking civic space and a growing impatience with dissent.
The symptoms of a society losing faith are increasingly visible. The “Japa” phenomenon continues to drain the country of some of its brightest minds – not in pursuit of adventure, but in search of survival. The informal economy expands in ways that often diminish human dignity. Mental health struggles, though rarely discussed openly, have intensified. Across countless households, conversations that once centred on career ambitions and future opportunities now revolve around a more immediate concern: how to secure the next meal.
The #EndBadGovernance protests of August 2024 remain a telling example. What began as a youth-driven expression of frustration over hunger, insecurity, and economic despair was met with a security response many domestic and international observers considered excessive. Protesters were arrested. Journalists covering the demonstrations were harassed and detained. The message was unmistakable: public anger could be tolerated only within limits defined by the state.
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This raises a larger question about the health of Nigeria’s democracy. Democracies are not measured merely by elections; they are measured by the breadth of permissible dissent. They are judged by how comfortably citizens can criticise power without fear of intimidation.
Under President Tinubu, institutions such as the EFCC and the police have too often appeared selective in their zeal. Opposition figures frequently find themselves under intense scrutiny, sometimes on allegations of questionable merit, while influential members of the ruling establishment seem to enjoy remarkable immunity.
The National Assembly, dominated by the APC, has repeatedly displayed more loyalty to the executive than fidelity to its constitutional oversight responsibilities. Budgets pass with minimal interrogation. Loans are approved with scant scrutiny. Nominees glide through confirmation processes that increasingly resemble formalities rather than examinations.
Meanwhile, the opposition has offered little resistance. The PDP remains trapped in recurring internal crises, many of which have been deftly exploited by the ruling party. The Labour Party, whose 2023 campaign electrified a generation of young Nigerians, has watched much of that momentum dissipate amid factional disputes and organisational instability.
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The result is an increasingly lopsided political landscape. Without a credible counterweight, executive power expands naturally. Governments rarely become more restrained when opposition weakens; they become more confident, more insulated, and more inclined to mistake compliance for consensus.
Of course, in all this, pro-government analysts often assert that the administration was taking steps in the right direction. They point to the unification of exchange-rate windows arguing that it has corrected a long-standing economic distortion; that foreign portfolio investment has returned; that the student loan scheme, despite bureaucratic bottlenecks, carries the potential to widen access to higher education; and that infrastructure projects inherited from previous administrations have continued, amongst other arguments.
However, these so-called achievements remain slender reeds upon which to build a grand narrative of renewal. When a government drags a drowning economy from a swamp only to abandon it in a desert, the victim is still dying; only the mechanism of death has changed.
At the heart of the matter lies a crisis of trust.
When historians eventually write the epitaph of this era, they may not conclude that Nigerians lacked resilience. On the contrary, not a few citizens have endured more with less complaint. They may instead record that the government asked for faith, demanded sacrifice, and promised a new dawn but delivered neither prosperity nor relief. That while citizens tightened their belts, those in power tightened their grip. That hope was not renewed but deferred, diminished, and, for many, buried.
No reform succeeds on technical merit alone. Citizens must believe that today’s sacrifices will produce tomorrow’s rewards. Such faith requires visible evidence: that subsidy savings are being reinvested in healthcare, education, and social protection; that anti-corruption efforts are impartial; that political opponents are not punished while allies are protected.
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On each of these tests, the administration’s record remains, at best, inconclusive and, at worst, deeply disappointing.
The symptoms of a society losing faith are increasingly visible. The “Japa” phenomenon continues to drain the country of some of its brightest minds – not in pursuit of adventure, but in search of survival. The informal economy expands in ways that often diminish human dignity. Mental health struggles, though rarely discussed openly, have intensified. Across countless households, conversations that once centred on career ambitions and future opportunities now revolve around a more immediate concern: how to secure the next meal.
When hope is buried alive, dreams do not simply disappear; they linger like ghosts, haunting ones waking hours. So, where does President Tinubu stand on the spectrum between renewer of hope and undertaker of dreams?
The fairest judgment is that he inherited a collapsing structure and chose demolition over patchwork repairs. Yet demolition without reconstruction is not reform. It is destruction wrapped in the language of technocracy.
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The President promised that the pain would be temporary. For millions of Nigerians, three years no longer qualifies as temporary. It is a generation-defining period of hardship. The patience of the hungry is finite. The endurance of the young is not inexhaustible.
That is why the promise of renewed hope increasingly resembles a rhetorical mirage. It shimmers in speeches and policy documents, yet remains elusive in the lived experience of ordinary citizens.
When historians eventually write the epitaph of this era, they may not conclude that Nigerians lacked resilience. On the contrary, not a few citizens have endured more with less complaint. They may instead record that the government asked for faith, demanded sacrifice, and promised a new dawn but delivered neither prosperity nor relief. That while citizens tightened their belts, those in power tightened their grip. That hope was not renewed but deferred, diminished, and, for many, buried.
Hope does not resurrect through slogans. It is revived through justice, accountability, competence, and empathy. It grows when citizens can see tangible evidence that leaders serve citizens rather than the ruling elite.
Whether President Tinubu ultimately embraces that path or continues down the present course – burying dreams one policy at a time – will determine not only the verdict of history on his presidency but also the future of a nation still searching for reasons to believe.
Onah is Editor-in-Chief of NATIONAL RECORD and writes this column every Wednesday.
