The presidency has faulted a recent report by The Economist which claimed there is growing public discontent with President Bola Tinubu’s administration ahead of the 2027 election.
In a statement on Wednesday, Sunday Dare, special adviser to
the president on media and public communications, said The Economist’s claim
“smells of opposition and is riddled with inconsistencies”.
On October 1, Nigeria’s Independence Day, The Economist said
President Bola Tinubu may win the forthcoming 2027 polls despite public
discontent.
In the report titled “Nigerians dislike their president, but
may re-elect him anyway”, The Economist cited a worsening security crisis, the
biting effects of the economic reforms, and popular political challengers as
factors that could work against the president’s re-election bid.
It noted that the president’s apparent confidence was not
necessarily a reflection of widespread satisfaction with his administration but
more about Nigeria’s complicated electoral dynamics.
“Incumbents, with access to the ruling-party machinery and
plentiful cash to dole out goodies, have tended to have an advantage in recent
Nigerian elections,” it stated.
However, Dare said beyond what he described as The
Economist’s condescension, Nigeria’s re-engineering under Tinubu is
unstoppable.
“In their rush to paint a picture of impending doom,
structural paralysis, and widespread citizen despair, these overseas observers
routinely traffic in sensationalist half-truths,” he said.
“They love to peddle the lazy, hollow fiction that
‘Nigerians hate President Bola Ahmed Tinubu,’ packaging localised
administrative growing pains into neat, uniform narratives of national
rejection.
“This is not merely analytical laziness; it is an
intellectual fraud. It completely overlooks the monumental, Herculean task of
national salvage undertaken by the Tinubu administration since May 2023.
“President Tinubu did not inherit a functioning, well-oiled
state; he inherited a broken economic ecosystem on the precipice of total
sovereign bankruptcy.”
Dare noted that for decades, successive petrol subsidy
regimes operated as a monumental financial leak, “feeding the insatiable greed
of a parasitic portfolio oil mafia while mortgaging the future of generations”.
“The Nigerian economy groaned under multiple, distorted
foreign exchange windows that bred corruption and choked legitimate
enterprise,” he said.
“Debt service-to-revenue ratios hovered near a staggering
95%, leaving the treasury virtually empty. Decades of underinvestment left
critical national assets, security architecture, energy grids, and
infrastructural arteries severely fractured.
“Yet, rather than kicking the can down the road like his
predecessors, President Tinubu summoned the political courage to confront these
structural contradictions head-on.
“By decisively terminating the burdensome fuel subsidy on
Day One, the administration stopped the bleeding of national resources, saving
the federation trillions of Naira and redirecting funds toward productive
capital development and fiscal sustainability.”
He said the implementation of the Nigerian Education Loan
Fund (NELFUND) has transformed the academic landscape with hundreds of
thousands of indigent students now pursuing higher education without the burden
of tuition, earning deep appreciation from students and parents nationwide.
“Walk into the lecture halls of federal and state
universities, and you will find students and relieved parents whose educational
dreams have been rescued by NELFUND,” he said.
“Speak with public servants whose take-home monthly pay has
been elevated by progressive wage reforms. Speak with local government chairmen
and community leaders who finally have the financial independence to execute
localised projects. Engage farmers witnessing targeted interventions.
“These citizens recognise a leader doing the heavy,
foundational lifting — someone cleaning up decades of accumulated governance
debris. They know that the current reforms are the bitter medicine required to
cure a chronic national ailment.”
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