Third year of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu: a balanced scorecard?

Third year of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu: a balanced scorecard?

PBAT has been in office for three years, and once again, the milestone presents an opportunity to evaluate how far he has gone in delivering the “Renewed Hope” promise.

This evaluation is purely to drive a reflection on governance outcomes and is not to be misconstrued as a political tool to sway opinions in any direction, as we are in the heat of the election season already.

Before delving into the details of my opinion and evaluation of the government, let’s start by outlining the facts of what has happened in the last three years under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

ECONOMIC

The main economic reform actions taken and headline results in the last 3 years are:

1. Removal of Petroleum subsidy

2. Unification of FX markets and move towards a managed float regime for price discovery

3. A holistic Fiscal policy and tax reform which has now become operational

4. Paid off US$3.4 billion IMF loan and cleared US$7billion FX backlogs

5. Federation Revenue increased from N16.8trillion to N31.9trillion

6. Net FX reserve up from ~US$4billion to US$34billion+

7. N30.7trillion increase in domestic debts (from N54.14T to N84.84T)

8. US$8.7billion increase in external debts (from US$43.16B to US$51.86B)

9. Tax-to-GDP ratio increased from 10% to 13.5%, indicating an improvement in tax collection efficiency

10. Implementation of a single window system and e-invoicing to improve collection efficiency and reduce fiscal leakages

11. Cost of living has, however, escalated significantly with petrol pump price up by 400%, and Nigeria accounting for 19% of the global poor.

EDUCATION

The Tinubu administration has largely kept our tertiary educational institutions open in the last three years, a sharp departure from the culture of perennial strikes and closures that historically affected our tertiary education.

The administration also established a Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) to provide interest-free loans to eligible students to cover tuition and stipends. So far, the fund has supported over 1.5million students across Nigeria.

The administration has also increased funding for the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) to support infrastructure development at the basic education level, while realigning the curriculum to achieve better outcomes in skills development, employability, and national values.

SECURITY

Key actions taken by the administration to improve security include:

1. Recruitment of 20,000 additional police officers

2. Establishment of Mining Marshals and Forest Guards to reduce Nigeria’s ungoverned spaces, especially around mining sites and vast forest reserves

3. Improved intelligence sharing and collaboration with the United States and other international partners

Despite these efforts, however, the security situation in the country has remained challenging with increasing sophistication of attacks by terrorists in the North East and North West regions, and expansion of terrorist bandits/kidnappers deeper into North Central and part of South West Nigeria.

INFRASTRUCTURE

The Tinubu administration has invested heavily in infrastructure development to increase connectivity and economic integration across geopolitical regions.

The most significant of the projects are:

• Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway: A massive $15-billion, 700-kilometer superhighway that will connect nine states across the South-West (4) and South-South (5) geopolitical zones.
• Sokoto–Badagry Superhighway: A 1,068-kilometer route designed to open up the North-South economic corridor.
• Abuja–Kaduna–Kano Expressway: Accelerated reconstruction of this critical arterial highway connecting the major commercial centers of the North-West to the political capital of the country.
• Akwanga–Jos–Bauchi–Gombe Expressway: A 422-kilometer highway connecting the North-Central and North-East zones.
• Port Harcourt–Maiduguri Eastern Rail Line: A $3 billion, railway revitalization project connecting South-South, South-East and North-East geopolitical zones.
• Eastern Port Infrastructure: A $508 million project directed at modernizing eastern ports to reduce congestion at the Lagos ports.
• Reconstruction of major interstate highways across the country with concrete pavement

ELECTRICITY

The PBAT administration amended the Electricity Act in 2024 to, amongst other things, create a new Transmission System Operator and an Open market platform to allow for more competitive electricity trading among participants. This is aimed at making the industry more attractive for private investors to enable the inflow of needed capital to improve electricity generation, distribution, and transmission.

The reform also introduced a requirement for electricity power-generating companies to set aside 5% of their annual operating expenditure for the development of their host communities.

The following infrastructure development initiatives are also ongoing to boost electricity supply, reliability, and access:

• Presidential Power Initiative: focused on the repair and upgrade of electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure.
• Addition of 175 new substations
• Deployment of a SCADA system to improve grid visibility, stability, and efficiency

POLITICAL RESTRUCTURING

Key political restructuring achievements or work in progress include:

· Resolution of the financial autonomy of Local Governments following the Supreme Court ruling of July 2024

· Establishment of regional economic development commissions to promote regional economic development and integration

· Assented to a new Electoral Act that addresses many of the challenges highlighted during the 2023 election and strengthens party governance

· Ongoing push for the establishment of State Police to further improve security architecture and empower the federating units in security management

BALANCED SCORECARD

My overall rating of the administration on its third-year milestone is 57% (up from 52% last year). This is broken down by different weighted dimensions below:

Third-year balanced scorecard rating of PBAT (by ARA)

COMMENTARY AND AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT

Overall, Security and Electricity improvements remain the administration’s weakest area of performance. Economic reform, Education, and Infrastructure development are the administration's strongest performance areas.

ECONOMIC

Notwithstanding the strong performance in steering the economy back from the brink, the administration mismanaged the currency transition, leading to sharp devaluation, which has been a major source of the reform pains. Also related is the lack of fiscal discipline and very poor implementation of interventions meant to mitigate the pains.

As we move ahead, the administration will do well to look into interventions that target businesses, and one low-hanging area of intervention would be to use the transition to a new fiscal regime to refund the massive, stranded capital of businesses held down in Withholding Tax credit notes accrued under the old obnoxious fiscal regime. This is the fastest way to create jobs and take many of our youths off the streets. And this is not a handout but a refund of money that belongs to the businesses. Current intervention that’s handouts and “stomach infrastructure” focused may look like a good political decision, but an approach that fixes real problems may indeed generate greater political momentum while also generating sustainable economic improvements.

Still on the fiscal side, waste and corruption must be systematically curbed across the government. And the new Finance Minister should bring new energy to the fiscal landscape to support the positive strides made on the monetary side.

SECURITY

This government started on the wrong note with Security. The leadership of the sector was politicized, and an inappropriate political leadership was imposed on our security establishment. This and other issues relating to equipment and conditions of service affected the morale and performance of the security establishment until recent changes were effected in 2025. The establishment of the Mining Marshals and Forest Guards has also run slower than expected and therefore delayed the impact that these additional security service units will add to reduce or eliminate ungoverned spaces exploited by terrorists to launch attacks on our communities. The delayed one stitch is now proverbially costing us nine.

The administration must immediately stop all terrorist repentance and redemption programs that have been set up by various states, almost to give terrorists a graceful escape from justice. Instead, we should intensify and fast-track efforts to bring to justice all the arrested terrorists in detention and reconstruct the communities that have been ravaged by terrorist attacks. Doing this builds greater trust with affected communities and improves the flow of useful information to enhance our intelligence capacity.

ELECTRICITY

The electricity sector suffered from very poor leadership in the last three years, resulting in a lack of progress in the critical infrastructure needed for development to truly take off. There was simply a total lack of understanding of the problem that confronted the sector, starting with the vision. To move forward, we must approach our electricity problem as a 150,000MW problem and not a 10,000MW problem. Under Governor Ambode, an assessment of the electricity needs of Lagos was carried out and scientifically determined to be around 32,000MW for Lagos to function as a productive mega city. So anyone attacking Nigeria’s energy needs as a 10,000MW has failed from the get-go.

Then we need to complete the transmission system improvement project, which will address the architecture and capacity weakness in the grid, enabling the uptake and efficient transmission and distribution of up to 25,000MW in the short term. That will immediately unlock about 8,000MW excess generation capacity that already exists but which we can’t utilize due to transmission capacity limitations. These, along with the increased adoption of catchment electricity for certain industrial, commercial, and residential estates, will set us in the right direction to improve electricity access and reliability for all. Hopefully, the new Minister for Power will get this right.

EDUCATION

The outlook for education is promising as there is a holistic approach that addresses Basic and TVET education, teacher education and training, efficient running, funding, and access to tertiary education.

One area of improvement, especially for basic education, is to broaden the application of UBEC fund beyond infrastructure development and especially focus its utilization to achievement of specific outcomes (e,g, primary, secondary & TVET enrolment numbers, qualified teacher numbers, pass rate in tertiary education admission examinations).

INFRASTRUCTURE

The strategic investment in infrastructure is highly commendable. The key improvement required is to improve the transparency of the contractual engagements for the projects. Overall, the infrastructure projects will significantly improve economic activities and impact national productivity when completed and operational.

POLITICAL

The government needs to improve its compliance with the “rule of law”, ease civil liberties, and improve the democratic culture by depoliticizing state institutions. The uniformed services especially need reorientation, retooling, retraining, and reinforcing, not just to keep us safe but to maintain law and order. Our judiciary also needs reform to serve the interests of Nigerians through efficient and judicious adjudication.

The office of the public defender needs strengthening, and the oversight functions of magistrates over police operations must be fully operationalized and strengthened by making magistrates more accountable for police abuses (illegal arrests/detentions, abuse of bail processes, etc.) that happen within their area of oversight coverage.

CONCLUDING REMARK

In conclusion, the administration is firmly moving in the direction that leads to “Renewed Hope”, but the speed and poor citizens' engagement are all contributing to disillusionment and exhausting the patience of the population that has been through a long period of declining socioeconomic conditions.

We need speed. We need intensity. We need compassion. We need a different tone at the top to curtail waste and official corruption. We need better citizen engagement. But whatever we do, we need to stay the course and complete the reforms. We must not submit to political expediency and populist pressures to reverse the progress we are making.

God bless Nigeria…ARA