When Bola Ahmed Tinubu took office on May 29, 2023, he presented himself as the surgeon Nigeria needed. He cut the petrol subsidy almost immediately, pushed the naira toward a market rate, and told Nigerians to endure pain now for prosperity later. What followed was not a clean reform story. It was a brutal transfer of shock onto ordinary citizens. Petrol, transport, food, electricity, rent, and basic survival all became more expensive, while poverty, insecurity, theft, and public anger deepened. Even the World Bank, while acknowledging some macroeconomic improvement, has said the gains have not yet improved Nigerians’ livelihoods.
Start with fuel, because fuel is the bloodstream of the Nigerian economy. In May 2023, before the subsidy removal fully hit, the NBS recorded average petrol prices at ₦238.11 per litre. By June 2023, that figure had exploded to ₦545.83, and by July 2023 it had climbed again to ₦600.35. Reuters reported pump prices hitting ₦617 per litre in July 2023. By December 2023, average petrol was ₦671.86. By June 2024, it was ₦750.17. By January 2025, it had surged to ₦1,258.34. The latest NBS figures available in public snippets show petrol around ₦1,034–₦1,035 per litre in January 2026. That means the average official petrol price is still more than four times the level around the month Tinubu took power. 
Gas and household energy followed the same cruel path. NBS data show a 5kg cooking gas refill at ₦4,068.26 in June 2023. By June 2024, it had risen to ₦6,966.03. By May 2025, it was ₦8,167.43. A 12.5kg cylinder stood at ₦9,123.25 in June 2023, ₦15,736.27 in June 2024, and was still climbing through 2025. Diesel reached ₦1,813.81 per litre in June 2025, while household kerosene was ₦8,482.22 per gallon in May 2025. In a country where millions rely on generators because grid electricity is unreliable, these are not just energy prices. They are penalties for being Nigerian. 
Food became the daily humiliation of the Tinubu era. NBS reported that 1kg of local rice cost ₦1,021.79 in January 2024, up 98.47% year on year. By February 2024, it was ₦1,222.97, up 134.81% year on year. Boneless beef in January 2024 cost ₦3,315.78 per kg. The World Bank said in October 2025 that food prices in Nigeria had increased fivefold since 2019, and that high food inflation was still crushing households even as macro indicators improved. Nigeria’s headline inflation rose from 22.41% in May 2023 to 33.69% in April 2024, near a 28-year high before later easing after CPI rebasing. Even with inflation slowing to 15.10% in January 2026, that does not mean prices went back down. It means they are rising from a much higher, punishing base. 
Transport costs told the same story because petrol infected everything. NBS data show average intra-city bus fare at ₦649.59 in May 2023. By January 2024, it had jumped to ₦963.38. Intercity bus fare rose from ₦4,002.16 in May 2023 to ₦7,571.96 in December 2024. This is what subsidy removal looks like in the real world: not abstract reform language, but workers spending more just to leave home and come back alive. 
Housing and utilities became another vice around the neck of the middle class and the poor. Nigeria does not publish a clean, easily accessible national monthly rent series in the same way it publishes fuel and food data, but the pressure is clear. Reuters reported that in April 2024 the government moved to cut electricity subsidies for higher-usage consumers, with the subsidy burden estimated at ₦3.3 trillion. By April 2025, the government said the tariff hike had cut electricity subsidies by 35%, generated an additional ₦700 billion in revenue, and reduced the sector’s tariff shortfall from ₦3 trillion to ₦1.9 trillion. Yet the same report said the grid remained weak, capacity far below installed levels, debts were mounting, and many Nigerians were still dependent on generators. So Nigerians have been hit twice: first by higher power tariffs, then by generator fuel costs. 
Now to the money the government says it has generated. Tinubu said in July 2023 that ending the petrol subsidy had saved over ₦1 trillion, or about $1.32 billion, in just over two months. The World Bank’s October 2025 update said FAAC revenues rose from 7.6% of GDP in the first eight months of 2024 to 9.5% in the first eight months of 2025, driven by better tax administration, higher oil production, and gains from subsidy removal. The Central Bank said net FX reserves rose to $34.8 billion by end-2025, from $3.99 billion two years earlier, while gross reserves reached $50.45 billion in February 2026. Those are real gains on paper. But paper does not buy garri. A country is not healed because a spreadsheet looks cleaner while its people eat less. 
And what has been spent? The 2024 federal budget was approved at ₦28.77 trillion, about $34 billion at the time. Tinubu then sought extra funding in July 2024 worth about ₦6.2 trillion, roughly $4 billion, as the cost-of-living crisis worsened. The 2025 budget was raised to ₦54.2 trillion and then approved at ₦54.99 trillion, about $36.6 billion. In July 2025, the Senate approved more than $21 billion in external borrowing to plug financing gaps. For 2026, Tinubu proposed ₦58.18 trillion, roughly $40 billion, with ₦15.52 trillion earmarked for debt service and ₦26.08 trillion for capital projects. Another fiscal plan projected ₦34.33 trillion in 2026 revenue against a ₦20.1 trillion deficit and ₦15.9 trillion debt-service cost. That is the heart of the problem: a state collecting more, borrowing more, spending more, yet still not delivering relief proportionate to the suffering. 
The government will point to projects, infrastructure, tax reform, CNG conversion, and power-sector restructuring. It will point to ratings upgrades from Moody’s and a more stable currency market. It will point to growth forecasts of 4.68% in 2026 and say the worst is over. But there is another ledger, the one written in fear and hunger. Reuters reported that Nigeria’s anti-graft agency recovered nearly $500 million in 2024 and secured a record 4,000 convictions, a reminder not of cleanliness but of the industrial scale of theft and criminality in the system. Transparency International still gives Nigeria a corruption score of 26, ranking it 142 out of 182 countries in its latest country page. This is not a state defeating corruption. It is a state still swimming in it. 
Then there is security, the oldest tax Nigerians pay with blood. Reuters reported that insurgents and bandits killed more people in the first half of 2025 than in all of 2024, while 857 people were abducted in that six-month period alone. In February 2026, Reuters reported another mass attack in Zamfara in which at least 50 people were killed and women and children were abducted. Oil theft, pipeline vandalism, mass kidnapping, banditry, farmer-herder conflict, jihadist violence, and urban criminality remain major features of daily life. Even where the government claims gains, such as a crackdown on oil theft and rising output, the fact remains that theft and insecurity have been central reasons Nigeria underperformed on oil production and public revenue for years. 
The most devastating number of all is poverty. In October 2025, the World Bank said an estimated 139 million Nigerians were living in poverty, up from 129 million in April 2025 and 87 million in 2023. The Bank’s message was brutally clear: Nigeria has made progress on stabilization, but those gains have yet to substantially improve Nigerians’ livelihoods. That single sentence is the obituary of the propaganda. A reform that enriches state accounts while hollowing out household survival is not yet a success. It is an austerity experiment imposed on a wounded nation. 
This, then, is the Tinubu balance sheet so far. More revenue. More debt. Higher budgets. Some macroeconomic stabilization. Better reserve numbers. Some ratings applause abroad. But at home? Dearer petrol. Dearer gas. Dearer rice. Dearer transport. Dearer electricity. Rising rent pressure. Greater poverty. Ongoing corruption. Persistent oil theft. Insecurity from Zamfara to the Middle Belt to the North East. Nigerians were told to tighten their belts. Many no longer have belts left to tighten.
The tragedy is not simply that reform has been painful. Serious reform often is. The tragedy is that in Nigeria, pain is immediate, public, and democratic, while the gains are delayed, uneven, and too often captured by the same political and commercial elite that created the mess in the first place.
Kio Amachree
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