The Independent Media and Policy Initiatives has said that President Bola Tinubu has engineered a turnaround in Nigeria’s economy through what it described as a deliberate deployment of economic progressivism.
In a policy statement signed by its Chairman, Dr Omoniyi Akinsiju, the group argued that the reforms introduced since May 2023 have helped steer the country away from decades of what it termed ‘fiscal profligacy, entrenched patronage networks and economic distortions’.
IMP I said the pre-reform economy was marked by oligarchic control of state resources, particularly in the oil sector, where a small circle of political elites, military officers and business interests dominated access to public wealth. It noted that before the reforms, 63 per cent of Nigerians, about 133 million people, were living in multidimensional poverty as of 2022.
It stated, “The ‘pre-reform’ economic landscape was defined by several key oligarchic and structural features: a significant portion of the oligarchy benefited from the fuel subsidy system, which was described as being rife with corruption and used as a “feeding bottle” for a select few. The existence of multiple exchange rate windows allowed ‘FX subsidy merchants’ to exploit the gap between official and parallel market rates, effectively draining government finances. Economic power was heavily concentrated in the petroleum industry, with access to oil revenues controlled by those in power and their close associates.
“By the time Tinubu took office, Nigeria was spending approximately 97 per cent of its total revenue on debt servicing, a situation described as ‘disastrous’. Beyond the oligarchy’s capture of the Nigerian state, we note the obvious decimation of the nation’s fiscal substance before the coming of the ruling All Progressives Congress to the federal administration in 2015.”
The group maintained that the Tinubu administration has now “taken Nigeria out of the woods”, citing what it described as signs of economic stabilisation and the dismantling of oligarchic dominance.
Among the policy tools it credited for the shift are fiscal and tax reforms, redistributive spending, estate and wealth taxes, labour and wealth protection measures, monetary and financial reforms, infrastructure development, and increased public investment.
“To support our assertion of an ideology-based economic turnaround, we itemise some of the key tools of progressivism that the President Tinubu-led federal administration has deployed to accomplish the present feat.
These include fiscal policy and taxation, redistributive spending, estate and wealth taxes, labour and wealth protection, monetary and financial reforms, infrastructural development, and public investment and ownership,” it said.
IMPI highlighted a surge in Federation Account Allocation Committee distributions in 2025, with the three tiers of government sharing over N33.27tn in the first eleven months of the year, representing a 30 per cent increase over the same period in 2024. It attributed the growth to subsidy removal and exchange rate reforms.
The group also cited declining inflation as evidence of progress. Headline inflation, it said, fell from a peak of 34.6 per cent in November 2024 to 15.10 per cent in January 2026, marking more than nine months of consistent disinflation. Food inflation dropped sharply to 8.89 per cent year on year in January 2026 from 29.63 per cent a year earlier, the first single-digit reading in over a decade and the lowest since August 2011.
On the foreign exchange market, IMPI noted a significant narrowing of the gap between official and parallel rates, shrinking from 60 per cent to about two per cent. As of 24 February 2026, the naira traded at approximately N1,349.24 to the dollar in the official market and between N1,355 and N1,420 in the parallel market.
The group concluded that the combined impact of subsidy removal, exchange rate unification and structural reforms has restored a measure of macroeconomic stability and strengthened subnational revenues, positioning the country for sustained growth.
