The economy is stabilising

Nigerians should be honest enough to acknowledge progress when progress has been made and courageous enough to say when progress has not yet become prosperity.

The Tinubu administration deserves credit for taking decisions that many Nigerian governments postponed for years. The removal of the petrol subsidy, the movement toward a more market-based foreign-exchange regime, the abandonment of monetary financing of fiscal deficits, the rebuilding of external reserves, and the tightening of monetary policy were politically costly measures. They imposed pain, but they also confronted distortions that had been quietly weakening the foundations of the Nigerian economy.

This is not a small achievement. Reform is easy to announce and difficult to sustain. In Nigeria, every attempt to correct an entrenched distortion is immediately tested by politics, public anger, vested interests, institutional weakness, and the daily pressure of survival. The Tinubu administration has nevertheless stayed the course on several of the most consequential elements of the macroeconomic reset.

What Deserves Recognition

The first achievement is a clearer macroeconomic direction.

The International Monetary Fund has said that reforms over the past three years improved Nigeria’s macroeconomic stability and resilience. In its 2026 Article IV assessment, the Fund credited the authorities with reforms that strengthened economic outcomes, while noting that conditions remained difficult for many Nigerians. That is an important distinction: the reform programme is not imaginary, and neither is the hardship.

The second achievement is a more credible foreign-exchange framework.

The Central Bank of Nigeria’s reform record describes the shift toward a willing-buyer, willing-seller model, the consolidation of previously segmented market windows, and efforts to clear verified foreign-exchange obligations. These steps were designed to reduce arbitrage, improve price discovery, and restore confidence in the market. The transition has been turbulent, but a transparent market is healthier than a system in which official rates and economic reality live in different countries.

The third achievement is the rebuilding of external buffers. The IMF reported that Nigeria’s gross international reserves, on the CBN definition, rose from US$40 billion at the end of 2024 to US$46 billion at the end of 2025, while net reserves rose from US$23 billion to US$35 billion. Nigeria’s FX reserves hit a 17-year high of $53.11 billion as of August 24, 2026.

Reserves are not food on a household table, but they are a national shock absorber. They give the country greater capacity to manage external pressure, defend financial stability, and reduce the risk that every oil-price or capital-flow shock becomes a national emergency.

The fourth achievement is sustained, broader-based growth. Nigeria’s growth rate climbed to 4.43% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, up from 3.89% in the previous quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics reported on Monday, August 31, 2026. Growth strengthened in both oil and non-oil sectors.

The IMF estimated 4.0% growth for 2025 and is forecasting 4.1% for 2026, with services and non-oil activity doing much of the heavy lifting. The World Bank also noted 3.9% year-on-year growth in the first half of 2025, backed by services, non-oil industries, better oil production, and agriculture.

These figures won’t fix Nigeria’s development gaps overnight. But for a country of this scale, they suggest the economy is moving from holding steady to building real momentum.

The fifth achievement is the restoration of a more orthodox monetary and financial framework.

The CBN has pursued a transition toward an inflation-targeting framework, strengthened financial-sector governance, introduced new capital requirements for banks, and expanded regulatory attention to virtual assets, payment systems, consumer protection, and financial inclusion. The IMF also welcomed the recapitalisation of banks, progress toward inflation targeting, Nigeria’s removal from the Financial Action Task Force grey list, and recent tax reforms. These measures matter because a modern economy cannot grow on weak institutions, opaque money markets, and undercapitalised financial intermediaries.

The sixth achievement is the possibility of a stronger fiscal foundation.

The World Bank reported progress in domestic revenue mobilisation, external balances, and fiscal management. Its April 2026 Nigeria Development Update projected public debt to decline from 42.5% of GDP in 2024 to 39.8% in 2025, while the consolidated fiscal deficit of the Federation widened slightly from 2.8% to 3.1% of GDP. These figures should not be used to declare victory. They should be read as evidence that fiscal repair is possible and as a reason to demand that every naira of recovered fiscal space be directed toward productivity, human capital, infrastructure, and protection for the vulnerable.

But the Economy Is Not the Same Thing as the Household

Here the national conversation must become more serious. Macroeconomic stability is necessary. It is not sufficient. A stable exchange-rate regime does not, by itself, fill a child’s lunchbox. A stronger reserve position does not repair a rural clinic. A declining debt ratio does not guarantee electricity for a small manufacturer. Growth does not become development until it creates purchasing power, productive jobs, security, reliable infrastructure, and a believable path upward for ordinary citizens.

The World Bank’s April 2026 Nigeria Development Update described the country as having made meaningful progress in restoring macroeconomic stability, while warning that household incomes had not fully recovered and poverty remained high. The IMF’s June 2026 assessment estimated poverty to have reached 63% at the national poverty line and estimated that 27 million Nigerians faced food insecurity in the autumn of 2025. These figures are not arguments against reform. They are the moral test of reform.

The painful truth is that the economy can be improving in the aggregate while citizens are deteriorating in the particular. A nation may record stronger reserves while families reduce the number of meals they eat. 

It may report rising GDP while graduates remain shut out of dignified work. It may celebrate fiscal consolidation while hospitals lack basic supplies and businesses purchase private power at ruinous cost.

That is the poverty paradox Nigeria must now confront: the distance between what the national accounts say and what the street experiences.

The Next Phase Must Be from Policy to People

The administration should now treat the first phase of reform as the beginning of the work, not its conclusion. The next phase must be judged by five tests: Food prices must fall through productivity, not slogans.

The World Bank has identified food inflation, logistics, security, storage, power, trade barriers, agricultural inputs, and infrastructure as central constraints. Nigeria needs an agricultural and food-system strategy that reduces the cost of moving food from farm to market, protects productive farmers, expands irrigation and storage, and makes power and transport less punitive.

Social protection must become credible, transparent, and productive. Cash transfers have a legitimate role in protecting people from shocks, but they cannot become a substitute for jobs, schools, healthcare, and electricity. A serious social-protection system must publish eligibility rules, payment totals, audit trails, coverage data, and outcomes. Relief should preserve human dignity today while building the capability to earn tomorrow.

Fiscal transparency must reach the Federation Account and the states. Nigeria cannot repair its national finances while subnational governments borrow against uncertain futures, underinvest in their tax bases, or treat public revenue as political property. Every loan should disclose its purpose, terms, approval status, repayment schedule, and expected public benefit. Every major allocation should be traceable from receipt to result. Where the facts are contested, the answer must be an open-book audit, not a louder press release.

Public spending must be measured by outcomes. A capital project is not successful because it was commissioned. It is successful when it reduces travel time, keeps a school open, improves hospital care, powers a business, protects a community, or lowers the cost of food. Nigeria needs budgets that speak the language of results, not merely releases, awards, and ceremonies.

The political economy of reform must become more ethical. Reform cannot ask sacrifice from the poor while protecting opacity among the powerful. It cannot demand tax compliance from citizens while tolerating waste, off-budget spending, procurement abuse, or weak accountability. The rule of law must apply upward as firmly as it applies downward.

A Word of Encouragement and a Charge

President Tinubu’s administration has done something important: it has begun to move Nigeria away from denial. It has acknowledged that subsidies, opaque foreign-exchange regimes, deficit monetisation, weak revenue mobilisation, and fragile financial institutions cannot deliver national prosperity. For that courage, the government deserves recognition.

But courage at the beginning of reform must become competence at the point of delivery. The administration now has to convert stabilisation into lived security. It must make the Nigerian economy not only investable, but inhabitable; not only credible to markets, but useful to families; not only resilient on paper, but humane in practice.

The street is not an enemy of economic reform. The street is its final court. The trader, farmer, teacher, apprentice, nurse, transport worker, student, and small manufacturer are not impatient spectators waiting for theory to mature. They are the economy. Their daily experience is the most honest national statistic.

The measure of the Tinubu economic project will therefore not be whether Nigeria can recite its reserves, growth rate, debt ratio, or reform catalogue. The measure will be whether a young Nigerian can work hard without being crushed by disorder; whether a family can eat without choosing between food and medicine; whether an honest business can compete without bribery; and whether public revenue can be seen in public good.

Nigeria has begun to stabilise. Now it must begin to heal. That is the passage from policy to people and from insight to impact.

“When the roots are deep, there is no reason to fear the wind.”