Governing Through Hardship: How Tinubu’s Policies Targets the Poor.

By George Omagbemi Sylvester | Published by SaharaWeeklyNG.com 

“Economic reform without justice is no reform at all. In Nigeria, millions are paying the price of mismanaged policy, rising inequality and administrative recklessness. The Poor Under Siege: Tinubu’s Policy Failure.”

There are moments in a nation’s life when governance ceases to be measured by competence and begins to be measured by suffering. Nigeria has reached such a moment. Under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, what was once marketed as “RENEWED HOPE” has mutated into structural hardship, widespread insecurity and the quiet erosion of dignity. Policies intended to stabilise the economy (subsidy removals, rising tariffs, new levies) have instead become instruments of pressure on ordinary citizens. The poor are no longer incidental victims; they are the frontline in a state-driven campaign of economic attrition. As W. E. B. Du Bois warned, “the cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.” In Nigeria, citizens are paying that higher price; not with chains, but with hunger, confusion and shrinking opportunity.

From the administration of Muhammadu Buhari’s lethargic governance to Tinubu’s frenetic improvisation, the APC era reads as a study in systemic failure. Buhari governed by inaction; Tinubu governs by motion. Both approaches, however different in style, have produced similar consequences: RISING INEQUALITY, POLICY INCOHERENCE and DWINDLING TRUST in PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS. Announcements precede implementation; reforms arrive without preparation; consequences are dealt with only after citizens suffer. Confusion, in practice, has become a governing strategy.

Tinubu entered office branding himself a “MASTER STRATEGIST.” What has emerged is a politics of approximation: ALMOST stabilising the naira, ALMOST attracting foreign investment, ALMOST governing effectively. Each “ALMOST ” has hardened into policy orthodoxy, each delay reframed as courage and each failure recast as sacrifice. Though societies do not subsist on intention. Citizens cannot eat forecasts, commute on promises, or survive on speeches.

From Reform to Extraction. Where strategic reform was required, Nigerians encountered extraction. Rather than phased restructuring, the government unleashed a wave of taxes, levies, tariffs and fees that transformed survival itself into a fiscal offence. The removal of the fuel subsidy, for instance, immediately escalated transport costs, which cascaded into food inflation. Electricity tariffs rose sharply, while power supply remained inconsistent. Customs duties and exchange-rate volatility squeezed manufacturers, eroding local production capacity.

Even the informal sector (historically Nigeria’s economic buffer) was quickly incorporated into the tax net without credit access, social protection, or supportive infrastructure. Economist Joseph Stiglitz has consistently argued that reforms that withdraw protection before providing alternatives inevitably harm the poor. Nigeria’s trajectory confirms that principle in stark, human terms.

At the heart of this approach lies a profound ethical contradiction. The state expanded its revenue appetite while shrinking its social responsibility. Taxation ceased to operate as a social contract; it became punishment. Families, workers and small businesses bear the cost, while politically connected elites navigate policies largely untouched. John Rawls, the philosopher of justice, reminds us that societies should evaluate policies based on their effect on the least advantaged. By that standard, Nigeria’s reforms are failing catastrophically.

Shock Therapy Without Cushion. The administration’s approach to fuel subsidy removal exemplifies this pattern. Implemented abruptly, it imposed pain without relief: no transport buffers, no food price stabilisation, no timely wage adjustments. This was not reform bravery, but it was shock therapy without diagnosis. Countries such as Brazil and Indonesia have shown that subsidy reforms succeed only when gradual, paired with targeted social safety nets. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has long argued that economic reform divorced from social protection is not reform at all; it is regression disguised as necessity.

Insecurity, Inflation and Policy Contradictions. Economic stress has been compounded by worsening insecurity. Farmers abandon fields due to violence and kidnapping, exacerbating food scarcity. Small traders are punished by currency volatility they neither caused nor understand. Exchange-rate fluctuations have transformed daily business operations into a gamble. Interventions frequently contradict each other: one day a policy promises relief, the next it imposes further cost. ACT FIRST, EXPLAIN LATER, APOLOGIZE NEVER and this has become standard practice.

The interaction of insecurity, inflation and policy incoherence creates a feedback loop. Violence limits production, driving up food prices. Inflation reduces purchasing power, increasing vulnerability to crime. Poverty deepens instability and instability deepens poverty. This is neither accidental nor temporary; it is the predictable outcome of fragmented governance.

Upward Redistribution, Downward Pressure. The human consequences are now visible in daily life. Parents ration meals. Graduates accept low-wage or precarious work for survival. Small businesses collapse under regulatory and tax pressure, while politically connected conglomerates thrive. Nigeria’s new system operates as a perverse redistribution mechanism: upward mobility for the elite, downward pressure for the majority. Poverty is no longer INCIDENTAL, but it has become STRUCTURAL.

Economist Thomas Piketty warns that when policy consistently favors capital over labour, inequality stops being accidental and becomes engineered. Nigeria has crossed that threshold. Economic reform without justice is no reform at all; it is a mechanism for reinforcing power hierarchies.

A Crisis of Ethics, Not Capacity. This is not reform fatigue. It is moral exhaustion. Nigeria is governed as though society were an abstract spreadsheet rather than a living community. Grace Paley once observed that politicians often speak obsessively about the future to avoid responsibility for the present. Tinubu’s presidency embodies this tendency. Citizens are drowning in the present while being instructed to endure for a promised tomorrow indefinitely deferred.

Du Bois reminds us that systems collapse not because they lack intelligence, but because they lack justice. Tinubu’s administration is not failing for lack of technical capacity; it is failing due to a deficit of conscience.

Denouement: Governance Is Not Performance. When governments wage economic war, the poor inevitably become the frontline casualties. Reform without justice is indistinguishable from cruelty. Policy without empathy corrodes legitimacy. Growth that excludes dignity is not progress.

Nigeria today is not suffering from a lack of ideas, but from a deficit of conscience. Governance has been reduced to performance, endurance to patriotism and suffering to proof of seriousness. But hunger is not a developmental strategy. Suffering is not a measure of progress. No nation can sustainably reform its economy by exhausting its citizens.

Legitimacy, once depleted, cannot be monetized. A state that asks its people to bleed indefinitely for an abstract future will ultimately find that endurance has limits. In Nigeria, the poor are not STATISTICS; they are SENTINELS of policy failure. A hungry nation cannot be governed on applause, nor can reform survive without justice.