By Dr Donald Peterson
Nigeria turned 66 on 1 October, and the honest verdict is that we are a country of extraordinary promise that spent much of its life postponing hard decisions. I think most of us know this. We feel it whenever we compare what we were handed in 1960 with what we have made of it.
So the useful question at 66 is where exactly we went wrong, and whether the repair has finally begun.
Where we got it wrong:
We mistook oil revenue for wealth. After the boom of the 1970s, agriculture and manufacturing were allowed to wither while the state learned to share rent instead of creating value. Then the bad habits hardened into policy: a petrol subsidy that by 2022 was swallowing trillions of naira a year, multiple exchange rates that rewarded access over enterprise, and deficits quietly financed by the central bank’s printing press.
The political error was older, and perhaps deeper. The coups of 1966 and the long military years replaced a working federation with a command structure, and the states became dependants queuing in Abuja every month. Our parties formed around ethnicity, region and personality, hardly ever around ideas. Elections became contests over who shares the cake, when the real question was always who can bake a larger one.
The repair:
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s distinction, I would argue, is that he chose the pain his predecessors deferred. On his first day in May 2023 he ended the petrol subsidy, and within weeks he unified the exchange rate. Nobody enjoys saying it, but those two decisions were always going to hurt before they helped.
What followed was the quieter work of rebuilding. Central bank financing of the deficit was reined in, the banks are being recapitalised, and the tax laws that took effect in January 2026 ease the burden on low earners and small businesses while widening the net. Add the student loan fund, the higher minimum wage, larger allocations to states, the push for local government financial autonomy and the new regional development commissions, and a pattern appears. Money and responsibility are moving closer to the people.
Why 2027 matters:
Reform is most fragile midway, when the costs have been paid and the dividends are only beginning to arrive. To change direction now would be to pay for the surgery and walk out before the healing. That, to me, is the plainest argument for returning President Tinubu in 2027.
There is a second argument. Continuity offers investors, states and ordinary households something this country has rarely given them: a predictable set of rules for eight straight years. And a third, particular to Nigeria. A second term completes the South’s turn and keeps faith with the rotation understanding that has held a delicate federation together.
Nigeria in 2031:
If the course holds, the Nigeria he hands over on 29 May 2031 should look recognisably different. The administration’s own ambition is a one trillion dollar economy by 2030. Even a near miss would mean a country that refines its own fuel, earns more from what it makes than from what it pumps, and collects enough revenue to borrow less.
I would expect single-digit inflation, a naira that moves without drama, a coastal highway and rail corridors carrying real freight, and states competing for investors instead of allocations. Not paradise, to be honest. But a country finally standing on a floor and no longer on a trapdoor.
What the next president must do:
The successor inherits a foundation, and the task changes from stabilising to building. Six things seem to me non-negotiable.
1. Protect the reforms. No return to subsidy, printed money or a rigged exchange rate, however loud the temptation.
2. Fix power. Nothing else scales without reliable electricity. Not factories, not technology, not jobs.
3. Invest in people. Schools, primary healthcare and skills for what will soon be one of the largest young populations on earth.
4. Finish the federation. Real devolution, state policing and fiscal federalism, so that states earn their keep.
5. Build institutions stronger than individuals. Courts, the electoral body and anti-corruption agencies that do not bend to whoever is in office.
6. Industrialise and export. Use the African Continental Free Trade Area to make Nigeria the factory and the marketplace of the continent.
Greatness, in the end, is cumulative. One president clears the ground, another builds on it, and a third must have the discipline not to tear it down.
The fair objection:
None of this is beyond dispute, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Critics, among them opposition parties, organised labour and a number of economists, argue that the reforms were poorly sequenced, that the cost of living crisis pushed millions deeper into poverty, and that insecurity and power supply remain stubborn. Some also worry that defections into the ruling party are thinning the opposition a healthy democracy needs.
The 2031 picture above is a projection and not a promise. Voters are entitled to weigh it against the evidence of their own kitchens.
