The reforms pursued by the current administration since its inauguration have restored stability and credibility to economic management, President Bola Tinubu said Friday.
“Federation revenues have risen, providing states and local governments with more resources for infrastructure, education, healthcare, and security,” the president said in his Democracy Day address.
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“Fiscal transparency has improved, leakage has been reduced, and public funds are better directed to national priorities,” he added.
The president also noted that investor confidence has returned, marked by growing investments in sectors as diverse as agriculture, energy, manufacturing, technology, mining, transportation and the creative industries.
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Nigeria has implemented an array of reforms aimed at speeding up economic growth and attracting international investors since President Tinubu took office three years ago.
The government abolished petrol subsidies, which had sapped the treasury of trillions of naira annually and had been a drain on public finance.
But that has had far-reaching implications for cost of living, with energy, transportation and food costs now at unusually elevated levels.
Similarly, the government unified the foreign exchange market by collapsing multiple, segmented exchange rate windows into a single market-driven system, with the FX rate now determined by the forces of demand and supply, rather than the former regime where the exchange rate was pegged.
Naira has also been significantly devalued to boost foreign investments, even though the push has fuelled inflationary pressures.
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In the same vein, the country has overhauled its tax system with a view to scaling up its tax-to-GDP ratio, revamped the methodology for calculating inflation, rebased its GDP and adopted an orthodox monetary policy in order to rein in inflation.
While these have yielded broad improvement at the macroeconomic level, with net FX reserves hitting $35 billion at the end of 2025 from $4 billion two years earlier, the reforms are yet to have a notable impact on livelihoods.
The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that living conditions have been difficult in Nigeria, with poverty reaching 63 per cent and 27 million Nigerians projected to face food insecurity later this year.
The Fund expects higher global fuel, food and fertiliser prices to boost exports and fiscal revenues, but to also drive inflationary pressures further up, potentially worsening poverty and food insecurity.
President Tinubu himself acknowledged in his speech that “many Nigerians still face economic hardship.”
He, however, assured that the government is focused on taming inflation, ramping up food production, generating employment, improving living standards and creating conditions for sustainable prosperity.
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