The Presidency on Tuesday rejected claims by The Economist that Nigerians are increasingly disenchanted with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, describing the publication’s assessment as condescending, distorted and disconnected from the impact of the administration’s reforms.
Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communications, Dr Sunday Dare, said the narrative of widespread rejection of Tinubu ignored what he described as the difficult economic inheritance of the administration and the structural changes undertaken since May 2023.
In a write up titled, “Beyond the Economist Condescension: Nigeria’s Re-Engineering Under Tinubu is Unstoppable”, Dare accused foreign commentators of reducing Nigeria’s complex economic and political realities to what he called sensationalist narratives of hardship and national despair.
“The Economist claims Nigerians dislike their President, but it’s a claim that smells of opposition and is riddled with inconsistencies”, he said.
According to him, attempts to portray economic difficulties arising from reforms as evidence of wholesale rejection of the President amounted to an inaccurate reading of developments in the country.
“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”, Dare said.
He argued that the administration inherited what he described as a severely weakened economic system, characterised by an unsustainable fuel subsidy regime, multiple foreign exchange windows, heavy debt-service obligations and years of underinvestment in infrastructure, energy and security.
The presidential adviser said Tinubu chose to confront the problems immediately rather than defer difficult decisions, citing the removal of petrol subsidy and rationalisation of the foreign exchange market among the measures taken to reset the economy.
He said the reforms had curbed waste associated with subsidy payments, reduced opportunities for foreign exchange arbitrage and begun strengthening government finances, trade balances and external reserves.
Dare also pointed to the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, financial autonomy for local governments, the new national minimum wage, deployment of Compressed Natural Gas buses and agricultural interventions as evidence that the government was attempting to cushion the impact of the reforms while rebuilding the economy.
“The notion that millions of Nigerians harbour blind hatred for President Tinubu collapses when you meet everyday reality”, he said, arguing that students benefiting from education loans, workers receiving improved wages, local governments accessing greater financial autonomy and farmers benefiting from interventions had reasons to support the administration.
He acknowledged that Nigerians were experiencing economic hardship but insisted that the pain was linked to what he called necessary structural reforms intended to address longstanding weaknesses in the economy.
“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”, Dare said.
The presidential adviser also criticised what he described as a tendency by foreign publications to view Nigeria solely through economic hardship and security challenges without recognising the broader changes underway across the country.
“Nigeria’s political and economic ecosystem is admittedly complex, shaped by security challenges and global economic headwinds. However, external commentators’ attempt to reduce this complex sovereign nation to a caricature of helpless misery does a disservice to the truth”, Dare said.
Dare maintained that the administration would not retreat from its economic programme, declaring that Tinubu’s policies had placed Nigeria on what he described as an “irreversible path toward sustainable growth, fiscal independence, and enduring prosperity.
“The narrative of inevitable rejection is exposed daily as a hollow illusion, dismantled by the tangible fruits of a renewed, resilient republic”, he added.
