FROM A FAKE LIFE TO A REAL ECONOMY: How President Bola Ahmed Tinubu Is Repositioning Nigeria for Sustainable Prosperity.
By Babatunde KUYE
“The true measure of leadership is not the ability to make popular decisions, but the courage to make necessary ones.”
For decades, Nigeria lived a life that was neither sustainable nor economically realistic. We projected prosperity while surviving on borrowed funds. We consumed more than we produced. We subsidized inefficiency, rewarded waste, maintained artificial exchange rates, and postponed difficult economic decisions because they were politically inconvenient.
In truth, Nigeria was living a fake life.
That illusion could not continue forever.
When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu assumed office in May 2023, he inherited an economy weighed down by unsustainable fuel subsidies, multiple exchange rates, mounting debt, declining investor confidence, shrinking public revenue, and a fiscal structure that left little room for meaningful development.
At different periods before his administration, debt servicing consumed an exceptionally large share of the Federal Government’s revenue, leaving limited fiscal space for education, healthcare, infrastructure, security, and other critical sectors. The nation was borrowing simply to sustain consumption rather than investing in productive growth.
Something had to give.
President Tinubu chose to confront the problem instead of postponing it.
The removal of fuel subsidy remains one of the boldest economic decisions taken by any Nigerian President in the Fourth Republic. Ironically, nearly every administration before him admitted that the subsidy regime was unsustainable. Reports were written. Committees were established. Experts recommended its removal. Yet no administration summoned the political courage to implement it because of the obvious backlash.
The subsidy had become a drain on national resources. It encouraged corruption, fuel smuggling, rent-seeking, and fiscal indiscipline while consuming trillions of naira that could have been invested in roads, hospitals, schools, electricity, agriculture, and industrial development.
Nigeria was literally borrowing money to subsidize consumption.
President Tinubu ended that cycle.
The immediate consequences were painful. Transport fares increased. Inflation rose. The cost of living became more difficult for many Nigerians. Those realities cannot be ignored or minimized.
Nonetheless, every nation that has successfully reformed its economy has passed through difficult transitions before enjoying sustainable prosperity. Economic transformation is rarely painless.
Another landmark decision was the unification and liberalization of Nigeria’s foreign exchange market.
For years, Nigeria operated multiple exchange rates that distorted the economy, encouraged arbitrage, discouraged investors, and created opportunities for corruption. The naira was sustained by administrative controls instead of market realities. Rather than solving the problem, those controls merely postponed it.
Although the exchange rate adjustment initially resulted in a sharp depreciation of the naira, the reform sought to restore transparency, improve investor confidence, attract foreign capital, and build a more competitive economy capable of earning foreign exchange through production rather than artificial interventions.
President Tinubu also embarked on one of the most ambitious tax reform agendas in Nigeria’s recent history.
For decades, Nigeria’s tax system was burdened by multiple taxation, overlapping tax authorities, poor compliance, a narrow tax base, and excessive dependence on crude oil revenues. Businesses often complained about paying numerous taxes to different government agencies, while millions of potential taxpayers remained outside the formal system.
The ongoing tax reforms seek to simplify tax administration, eliminate multiple taxation, improve compliance, broaden the tax base, and strengthen domestic revenue generation. More importantly, the reforms are designed to reduce Nigeria’s dependence on borrowing by creating a more sustainable and predictable source of government revenue.
A stronger tax system means more resources to fund quality education, modern healthcare, road infrastructure, electricity, security, technology, agriculture, and industrial development. It also creates a more predictable business environment capable of attracting local and foreign investors while encouraging entrepreneurship.
No country becomes prosperous without a functional tax system. The world’s most developed economies finance public services largely through efficient taxation rather than endless borrowing. Nigeria’s journey toward fiscal sustainability must follow the same path.
The administration has equally encouraged greater fiscal responsibility across all levels of government. States are increasingly expected to expand their internally generated revenue, improve productivity, and reduce excessive dependence on monthly allocations from the Federation Account. The emphasis is gradually shifting from sharing national wealth to creating national wealth.
Beyond economic reforms, President Tinubu has also pursued structural reforms that many Nigerians have demanded for years.
The Supreme Court-backed financial autonomy for local governments represents a major step toward strengthening governance at the grassroots, ensuring that resources allocated to local councils are used for community development rather than being unduly controlled elsewhere.
The administration has also shown support for broader constitutional reforms, including discussions around devolution of powers and state policing. These are long-standing issues that have featured prominently in national conversations on restructuring and formed key recommendations of previous constitutional reform efforts, including the National Conference, 2014.
Perhaps what distinguishes President Tinubu’s administration most is not simply the reforms themselves but the willingness to undertake reforms that many leaders acknowledged were necessary but consistently avoided because they were politically difficult.
Leadership should never be judged solely by today’s applause.
History has often shown that transformative leaders are criticized while implementing painful reforms, only to be appreciated years later when the benefits become evident.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu may not receive universal praise today. The sacrifices demanded by his reforms are real, and Nigerians rightly expect those sacrifices to translate into better roads, stable electricity, quality healthcare, improved education, stronger institutions, increased employment, enhanced security, and inclusive economic growth.
For too long, Nigeria lived a fake life, spending money it did not have, sustaining an artificial economy, borrowing to finance consumption instead of production, and postponing difficult decisions that should have been taken years earlier. That era is gradually giving way to the hard but necessary path of economic realism, productivity, fiscal discipline, institutional reform, and sustainable prosperity. Nations do not become wealthy by pretending to be rich; they become wealthy by building productive economies founded on discipline, innovation, and responsible governance.
If these reforms are sustained with transparency, accountability, and complementary investments in agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, technology, security, and human capital development, future generations may well look back on this period as the turning point when Nigeria abandoned economic illusion and embraced economic reality.
Great nations are not built on easy choices.
They are built by leaders willing to take difficult decisions today so that future generations can inherit a stronger tomorrow.
Perhaps that is the enduring legacy President Bola Ahmed Tinubu seeks to leave behind, a Nigeria that no longer survives on borrowed comfort or artificial prosperity, but one whose progress is driven by productivity, fiscal responsibility, institutional strength, and sustainable economic growth.
The journey is difficult.
But history may yet remember it as the moment Nigeria stopped living a fake life and began building a real economy.