JONATHAN NDA-ISAIAH writes that three years after Tinubu’s shock reforms, the macro numbers and the human experience of Nigeria’s economy remain stubbornly far apart.
Three years ago, President Bola Tinubu stood at Eagle Square and declared Nigeria “open for business.” Hours later, he scrapped the fuel subsidy. Weeks later, he unified the exchange rate. The moves were swift, bold, and painful.
Today, the country is still counting the cost and looking for the dividend. Inflation climbed to 34.6% in late 2024 before slowing. The naira fell from N460/$ to over N1,500/$ on the official window, then steadied. Petrol moved from N185 to above N900 per litre. Yet the government points to 3.4% GDP growth in Q1 2026, rising tax revenues outside oil, and a current account surplus not seen in a decade.
On the streets of Oshodi and Sabon Gari, the debate is not about GDP. It is about whether the salary can last till the end of the month. For manufacturers, it is whether they can source dollars without having to queue for months. For farmers, it is the cost of fertiliser and diesel.
This assessment goes beyond press statements. We examine what changed, who gained, who lost, and what the data says versus what Nigerians feel. We track five key pillars: subsidy removal, FX reform, revenue, debt, and jobs.
Three years on, the verdict on Tinubu’s economy is still being written. Here is what we know so far.
The Big Bang: Subsidy Removal and Its Aftershocks
The petrol subsidy was always a fiscal time bomb. By early 2023, Nigeria was spending more on keeping petrol cheap than on health, education, and infrastructure combined. The NNPCL was remitting almost nothing to the federation account. The official line was welfare. The operational reality was that the bulk of the subsidy benefit flowed to fuel importers, tanker owners, and a logistics chain riddled with fraud.
Removing it was said to be a correct policy by economists. However, the manner and timing announced on inauguration day, with no cushion in place, was a political and humanitarian gamble that landed hard on the poor.
The fiscal consequences were immediate and dramatic. Government revenues nearly doubled within the first year. FAAC gross revenues rose to N37.4 trillion in 2025. The World Bank confirmed that aggregate collections by Nigeria’s main revenue agencies climbed from N16.5 trillion in 2023 to N29.5 trillion in 2024. Money that had been burning in a subsidy queue was at least partially redirected to the federation account.
The social consequences were equally immediate. Transport fares doubled overnight. Food prices followed. Businesses dependent on petrol-powered generators, that is, most Nigerian businesses, absorbed cost shocks and passed them directly to consumers. The poor, who spend the highest proportion of their income on food and transportation, bear the heaviest load. The administration’s promised cash transfer programme to cushion the blow moved more slowly than the pain it was designed to address.
The honest assessment is that the subsidy removal was the right decision, but it was executed without adequate preparation for its human consequences.
The Naira’s New Reality: Life After the Float
Before June 2023, Nigeria operated a fiction. The official exchange rate bore little relationship to what anyone actually paid for dollars. The gap between the official and parallel market rates had become a permanent subsidy for those with access to the official window, again, the well-connected and a permanent tax on everyone else.
The CBN’s unification of the exchange rate windows on 14 June 2023 ended that fiction. What it replaced it with was a naira that found its genuine market value, and that value, after years of artificial support, was brutal. The currency fell from roughly N460/$ to over N1,500/$ within months before the CBN began stabilisation operations.
Three years on, the picture is mixed but measurably improved from the worst of 2024. The CBN cleared a verified $7 billion FX backlog that had paralysed manufacturing and trade for years. Gross foreign reserves climbed to $50.45 billion by February 2026. Capital importation in Q1 2025 reached $5.64 billion, up 67 per cent year on year. The IMF confirmed that portfolio inflows, long absent, had resumed.
For importers and manufacturers who spent years unable to access official FX at any price, the unified market, however expensive, represents a functional improvement over the previous dysfunction. For the average Nigerian whose naira savings lost two-thirds of their dollar value, it remains a wound that has not healed. The naira has stabilised. It has not recovered. Those are two different things.
