Not unexpectedly, the midterm evaluation score of the performance of the Tinubu presidency has become one more bone of contention. Nobody expected unanimity of opinion on the matter, anyway, no matter the obvious weight of the evidence. Between the Tinubu acolytes on one side and the popular side, comprising the opposition and the critics, among others, a chasm exists which is difficult to bridge.
The marking schemes adopted by the two contending sides, are not the same, to start with. Invariably, therefore, the scores are bound to be different. But there is a third side, the verdict of which should provide the more accurate performance gauge of the first two years of the Tinubu government. This third force does not thrive in colourful rhetoric, it lives the reality of everyday life. On this corner is found the markets, the street and the ordinary household.
Interestingly, even within the party of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and among his visible, vocal supporters, scoring the performance of his government depends on where the grading is carried out. What a number of his supporters score him in the public is often remarkably different from what they score him in private. When the lights go off and the caps come down, quite a number of the supporters deliver a much more sombre assessment.
Tinubu is reckoned to be an experienced politician. It is not likely that he is totally oblivious of this binary assessment disposition among his followers. A politician will, of course, hold tight to, and amplify that which is publicly trumpeted in his favour. Take, for instance, the midterm performance assessment of the government by Senate president Godswill Akpabio last week. The head of the legislative arm was so pleased with the performance of the Tinubu government that he composed a song of praise and mounted a public podium with his composition. Tinubu must have been sufficiently amused.
Whether any value can be assigned in any serious assessment of the government performance to the Akpabio gig is another matter. If, as he did, Akpabio contended that Tinubu “is gradually revitalizing our economy, improving the lives of Nigerians, rekindling hope in our people”, the question becomes, is anything different expected of him?
On the other hand, a verdict by former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, that dismisses the two years of the Tinubu presidency, as a traumatic exposure of Nigerians to administrative incompetence and economic wastefulness, can easily be said to be expected from him.
Two years into his four-year presidency, it is not really what Tinubu scores himself, or what his agit-prop machinery ascribes to his government, that matters as a true gauge of his government’s performance, so far. The real verdict lies in the street. How the ordinary citizen is fairing provides the ultimate scorecard.
How a government, in this case, the Tinubu government, has performed in two years, is not and cannot end up as a political subject of debate. It is a matter of life. And death. Literally.
Tinubu’s speech on his second term in office was, to be fair to him, a fairly good speech. It wove together a smooth prose on where his government is going, where it purports to have gone and made claims to commitment to wholesome values in pursuit of a better tomorrow. As is characteristic of the Tinubu presidency however, his anniversary speech was high on rhetoric, but short on identifiable deliverables.
He proclaimed for instance, that “our highways, hitherto dangerous for travellers, have become safer. Our security agencies have succeeded many times in rescuing the abducted citizens from the hands of their tormentors”. The contradiction in the statement speaks for itself. If our highways have become safe now, which it is not, why will security agencies need to be rescuing abducted citizens from the hands of their tormentors? The subsisting reality, of course, is that insecurity is still ravaging the length and breadth of the country.
The president cannot, in good faith, be proclaiming that parts of the northwest that used to be under the flag of terrorists have now been reclaimed, while conveniently ignoring the calamity of Plateau State where scores of lives and numerous communities have continued to be wantonly wasted by terrorist invaders. Nor did he reference the steady devastation of Benue State, the frequent terrorist strikes on Katsina and the daring terrorist incursions into Edo, Enugu, Delta, Ondo, Kogi, Kwara and Imo states. Amnesty International says no less than 10,000 lives have been lost to terrorists and banditry attacks in the last two years, which coincides with the Tinubu presidency. So far, no contrary statistics has been advanced by those around the government who disagree with the Amnesty International data.
There are other glaring contradictions and contentious declarations in the anniversary speech of president Tinubu, which belie his claims of hope and progress of the country under his watch. Corruption and lack of transparency in government for one, remains a big issue. It may be well and good for the Tinubu government, through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to be slapping new charges on Godwin Emefiele every week, but that hardly masks several troubling issues of lack of accountability, which bothers on scandal.
The charge of budget padding, in form of N6.93 trillion allegedly inserted by the National Assembly in the 2025 budget as discovered by BudgIT, stubbornly stands to counter any claim by the Tinubu government of improvement in transparency and accountability in its conducts. Instructively, the government has refused to address the matter, even as the issue has refused to go away.
On the basis of the N6.93trillion budget padding allegation alone, the 2025 budget contains some of the most outrageously corrupt appropriation provisions in Nigeria’s budget history. How does the government explain the provision of a whopping sum of N393 billion for 1477 street lights, translating to N266 million per street light? Was that an error? If it was, how about the provision for boreholes that was no less outlandish?
In his midterm anniversary speech, President Tinubu claimed also that “we are eliminating the burden of multiple taxation, making it easier for small businesses to grow and join the formal sector”. These are lines that seem designed to sound glorious on paper. At the time that speech was being read to Nigerians, national newspapers were reporting screaming stories that several manufacturers and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMES) were groaning and protesting that inclement business climate was forcing many of them to close down. About 18,000 jobs, according to their statistics,were lost in 2024 alone. So, who is to be believed; the industry and market, or the president and his speech writers?
The 1980 Ronald Reagan question to Americans on whether they were “better off today than four years ago”, a question he deployed deftly to bring incumbent President Jimmy Carter to some form of electoral justice, has remained an eternal measurement gauge of government performance before the citizens. There is simply no way Tinubu and his ardent supporters can expect a positive answer by Nigerian citizens to the ‘Reaganesque’ question. Haranguing those who hold up this simple measurement rod, as a test of how well the government has done, offers no solution to anyone. Truth is eternal.
A major defect of the Tinubu presidency, in its first two years, is not just that its policy choices brought pain and sorrow to many, it is that in spite of the obvious travails of the majority, the government refused to subscribe to the doctrine of leading by example. Tinubu will always assure the people that he understands their pain and sacrifices, but it all ends at that. There is nothing about the disposition and bearing of officials of the Tinubu government that reflect austerity. But he understands the pains of the deprived citizens.
the Tinubu government attaches overwhelming importance to optics, easily clutching on to irrelevances that make no impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. An example at hand is the government’s excitement over recent rating by Moody’s Investment Services, which upgraded Nigeria’s long term foreign currency rating from Caa1 to B3, or whatever, forecasting a stable currency prospect in the days ahead. According to a statement ascribed to an excited Tinubu on the new rating, the “upgrade signals to global investors and partners that Nigeria is back on a path of responsibility, reform and renewed credibility”.
The simple question here is; how does these esoteric economic titrations affect the price of beans and yam in the market? How does the jargon remove the terrorists lurking at people backyard and destroying farmlands across states?
As the Tinubu government enters the second phase of its tenure, it should get more sincere and serious. Ordinary Nigerians make no sense in such jargon as Moody’s rating forecast. They need food, security and improved standard of living. The government has not delivered on these basics so far. Nor has it offered hope of a better future.