Surviving, Not Thriving: The True Cost of Defensive Statehood Under Tinubu

President Bola Tinubu and Vice, Kashim Shettima [PHOTO: Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Facebook]

When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu assumed office under the banner of the “Renewed Hope” agenda, millions of Nigerians held onto high expectations. His government promised structural reforms, economic revitalization, infrastructure acceleration, investment growth, and national renewal. Yet, the deeper realities of the Nigerian state quickly forced the administration into a defensive posture. Since 2023, what we have witnessed is not the grand architectural sweeping of national transformation, but a series of successes recorded entirely in short-term fixes and disaster aversion.

To understand this administration is to understand the concept of defensive statehood — a condition where a government is forced to stop building the future because it is entirely consumed by managing survival. The country becomes trapped in three simultaneous crises: security-centred governance, fiscal firefighting, and a perpetual fight for legitimacy. Under President Tinubu, Nigeria is experiencing all three at once.

The Weight of Inherited Crises

Tinubu inherited a state under pressure from every direction: insurgency in the Northeast, banditry in the Northwest, separatist tensions in the Southeast, oil theft in the Niger Delta, and an industrial-scale kidnapping epidemic nationwide. At the same time, the economy faced severe macroeconomic vulnerabilities, dwindling fiscal space, forex instability, subsidy distortions, and mounting debt obligations.

Overlaying these structural pressures was a politically fragmented environment following the contentious 2023 electoral cycle. Elite consensus remained fragile, and public trust was deeply polarized. Under such circumstances, governance naturally became defensive.

So, what happened to the fire to renew the hope of Nigerians? When a government spends most of its energy trying to prevent a systemic collapse, governance becomes defensive before it can ever become developmental.

The Statistics of Survival

The burden of constant crisis management explains why many Nigerians struggle to see the administration’s achievements. The data over the last three years paints a stark picture of why citizens are frustrated, agitated, and struggling to connect macroeconomic policy sacrifices with tangible improvements in their daily lives.

Fiscal Firefighting and the Cost of Living:

The administration’s economic reforms generated unprecedented turbulence. According to World Bank and National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data, poverty in Nigeria rose steadily from 56% in 2023 to 61% in 2024, peaking at a staggering 63% in 2025. Today, an estimated 140 million Nigerians live below the poverty line. While the government successfully engineered a sharp decline in headline inflation — bringing it down from a suffocating 34.80% in December 2024 to 15.15% by December 2025 — the easing of prices came too late to save purchasing power. The cumulative impact of earlier inflation spikes had already decimated real incomes, leaving small businesses collapsed and household wallets empty.

Security-Centric Governance:

Insecurity has transitioned from a regional crisis to a booming illicit economy, forcing the state to pour resources into containment rather than infrastructure. A report by SBM Intelligence recorded a staggering 4,722 kidnappings between July 2024 and June 2025 alone. The financial toll on citizens has been equally devastating; NBS data indicates that Nigerians paid an estimated ₦2.23 trillion in ransoms to kidnappers between May 2023 and April 2024. When citizens are paying trillions just to stay alive, the social contract is profoundly fractured.

The Transformation of Governance Culture

One of the most underappreciated effects of defensive statehood is how it transforms the culture of governance itself. In stable, developed climes, leadership can pursue proactive governance: long-term planning, institutional strengthening, bureaucratic modernization, and strategic national investments.

But under defensive conditions, governments become trapped in perpetual reaction cycles. Instead of rolling out cohesive, forward-looking policies, the government’s communication apparatus is perpetually on the back foot. We routinely see presidential spokespersons issuing press statements to explain, debunk, or deny policies that government agencies have already begun implementing. This reactive posture is a direct symptom of a state overwhelmed by the immediate fires it must put out.

The Paradox of Avoided Disasters

Has defensive statehood helped or hurt Tinubu’s administration? The answer is complex.

On the one hand, the administration has managed to preserve macro-political continuity during an exceptionally volatile period in Nigeria’s history. Despite immense pressure, Nigeria has not experienced systemic fiscal collapse, institutional breakdown, or widespread national paralysis. The government has sustained state functionality, maintained political order, initiated deeply unpopular but necessary economic reforms, and prevented a total macroeconomic meltdown.

From a defensive-state perspective, these are monumental achievements.

However, the limitations are equally visible. Economic hardship has weakened confidence in the reform timelines carried over from the Buhari era. This is the ultimate paradox of defensive governance: success is measured by disasters avoided, rather than prosperity achieved. But you cannot feed a starving population with statistics of averted catastrophes.

Three years into the Tinubu administration, Nigeria remains a state balancing reform ambitions against the gravitational pull of systemic fragility. The concept of defensive statehood offers a more sophisticated lens through which to evaluate the government’s performance. It explains why governance often appears reactive, why reforms generate turbulence before stability, and why survival management sometimes overshadows developmental momentum.

President Tinubu’s administration has spent much of its tenure bailing water to stabilize a heavily leaking ship amid turbulent waters. He has kept the ship afloat. But the next challenge is infinitely more difficult: transforming that stabilization into the sustained national renewal he promised.

Adanu Moses