Tinubu says Nigeria must stay the course on economic reforms

President Bola Tinubu has defended his administration’s economic programme, saying the reforms introduced since 2023 confronted Nigeria’s structural weaknesses instead of causing them. In his Independence Day address, Tinubu said earlier governments had postponed difficult choices and allowed economic distortions to become more serious. He argued that the country had reached a point where continued short-term relief would not resolve its underlying problems.

The government removed the fuel subsidy and liberalised the foreign-exchange market after Tinubu took office. The measures have been associated with higher transport and consumer costs, but the administration says they are intended to put the economy on a more sustainable footing. Tinubu acknowledged the hardship created by the changes.

He said the reforms had produced real side effects, but urged Nigerians not to confuse the painful consequences of the measures with the weaknesses they were intended to address. The President rejected calls to return to the previous subsidy arrangements. He said such policies had consumed large amounts of public money while allowing deeper problems to persist and shifting their consequences to future generations.

He maintained that the economic outlook was improving and cited growth of more than 4 per cent during the year. According to Tinubu, both the oil and non-oil sectors contributed to the expansion. The address presented the reforms as a necessary stage before the government’s promised shift towards broader prosperity.

The source does not include independent verification of the economic figures or responses from critics of the programme. Tinubu’s message was that Nigeria should continue with the policies despite their immediate costs. He said abandoning the reforms would risk returning to arrangements that, in his view, masked rather than solved the country’s economic problems.