Three years after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu assumed office, Nigeria is no longer standing at the same economic crossroads at which his administration met it. The road has been difficult, sometimes painfully so, but the direction has become clearer. Tinubu inherited an economy weighed down by fuel subsidy costs, foreign exchange distortions, weak revenues, mounting fiscal pressures and declining investor confidence. His response was not to postpone the difficult decisions, but to confront them.
The removal of the petrol subsidy and the unification of the foreign exchange market were politically hazardous decisions, but international institutions now acknowledge that the reforms have strengthened macroeconomic stability and rebuilt Nigeria’s resilience. The IMF says the reforms have reduced fiscal vulnerabilities, improved foreign exchange market functioning and rebuilt external buffers, while the World Bank says Nigeria has made great progress in restoring macroeconomic stability.
The most compelling evidence is beginning to appear in the structure of the economy itself. Nigeria recorded real GDP growth of 3.87 percent in 2025, compared with 3.38 percent in 2024, and expanded by 4.43 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2026. The World Bank also reports that 2025 growth was driven largely by services, particularly ICT, finance and real estate, alongside stronger agricultural and construction activity. Foreign exchange reserves have strengthened, while Nigeria’s current account has moved into substantial surplus. Even Moody’s revised Nigeria’s credit outlook from stable to positive in August 2026, citing stronger economic growth and improved resilience to external shocks. These are not arguments that every Nigerian is already comfortable. The opposite is true, and household incomes and living standards remain under pressure. But they are evidence that the patient has moved from emergency stabilisation toward recovery.
And then there is infrastructure, the physical architecture of the Nigeria we want to build. More than 2,700 kilometres of highways and major roads are under construction, reconstruction or rehabilitation, including the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway, the Sokoto–Badagry Super Highway, the Abuja–Kaduna–Zaria–Kano corridor, the Enugu–Makurdi Road, and the East–West Road. Rail modernisation is continuing, while investments in ports, airports and other transport infrastructure are designed to reduce the cost of moving people and goods. In the power sector, the administration has confronted a problem that generations of governments struggled to resolve: the debt and structural weaknesses of the electricity value chain. The Electricity Act has opened the door for states to participate more directly in electricity generation, transmission and distribution, while government backed interventions are expanding metering, transmission and off grid power. The significance is simple: roads connect markets, electricity powers businesses, and infrastructure creates the platform upon which prosperity is built.
Agriculture is equally central to the Tinubu vision because food security is ultimately national security. The administration has moved beyond the old model of treating farmers simply as beneficiaries of annual government programmes and is increasingly emphasising mechanisation, irrigation, inputs, finance, processing and market access. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture reports that the Renewed Hope Agricultural Mechanisation Programme deployed 2,000 tractors and other equipment in 2025, while the National Agricultural Development Fund is planning the deployment of 10,000 tractors over five years. Government interventions have also included rural boreholes, solar infrastructure, markets and rural facilities. The objective is bigger than producing more food. It is to create an agricultural economy in which the farmer, processor, transporter and trader all become part of a productive chain that creates employment and reduces Nigeria’s dependence on imports.
In education, perhaps no policy better captures the administration’s philosophy of expanding opportunity than the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND). The programme has opened a pathway for hundreds of thousands of Nigerian students who might otherwise have been forced out of tertiary education because their families could not afford the cost.
The 2026 budget reported that more than 788,000 students had been supported through NELFUND in partnership with 229 tertiary institutions, while the administration has simultaneously invested in tertiary infrastructure through TETFund. New science complexes, libraries and other facilities are being delivered across institutions. This is important because Nigeria cannot reform its economy sustainably without reforming the human beings who must operate it. A nation of educated, skilled and technologically capable young people is itself an economic asset.
Healthcare, too, is being repositioned around the idea that government must bring quality care closer to ordinary Nigerians. The administration has placed renewed emphasis on primary healthcare, expanded financing through the Basic Health Care Provision Fund and pursued broader health insurance coverage.
The Federal Government reported that utilisation of primary healthcare services increased dramatically from about 10 million visits in early 2024 to roughly 45 million by mid 2025, a sign of increased engagement with the system. The administration’s stated goal has been to expand fully functional primary healthcare centres across the country and link them to emergency care systems. Housing is receiving similar attention. The Renewed Hope Housing Programme and Federal Housing Authority initiatives are delivering thousands of homes across states and the FCT, with the government projecting more than 300,000 jobs from the latest housing programme. For a young country where millions need homes, jobs and affordable services simultaneously, housing policy is also employment policy.
On foreign policy, Nigeria has recovered something that cannot easily be measured in naira: presence. Tinubu has pursued an increasingly active diplomatic posture, particularly around African regional stability, economic diplomacy and Nigeria’s strategic relationships with major powers.
As ECOWAS chairman, he placed Nigeria at the centre of difficult regional conversations over democracy, constitutional order and security, even as the regional bloc confronted the unprecedented withdrawal of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Nigeria has also continued to deepen economic and diplomatic engagement beyond West Africa. The point is not that every diplomatic initiative has produced immediate economic dividends. Foreign policy should be judged honestly. But Nigeria under Tinubu has sought once again to act as a consequential African power rather than a country merely reacting to events around it.
Security remains the hardest test, and it would be dishonest to claim that Nigeria has defeated terrorism, banditry and kidnapping. It has not. But the scale of violence has reduced, which indicates that the Tinubu administration has invested aggressively in intelligence-led security posture, military capability, surveillance and inter-agency operations.
The administration has also taken stronger action against terrorists, bandits, kidnappers and oil thieves; and major rescue operations, including the recovery of more than 300 abducted people in a single operation in August 2026. The 2026 budget allocated ₦5.41 trillion to defence and security, reflecting the administration’s decision to place national security at the centre of national development. The unfinished nature of the security challenge is therefore not an argument for abandoning the process. It is an argument for giving the process the continuity and resources required to succeed.
Ultimately, Tinubu’s first term has been about making difficult structural changes; a second term will be about turning those changes into broadly shared prosperity. Nigeria does not need to restart the journey every four years. It needs the courage to stay the course, correct what is not working, strengthen what is working, and finish what has begun.