Nigeria Under Tinubu: The Pains, the Gains, and the Evidence

An evidence-based examination of economic reforms, national outcomes and everyday life since May 29, 2023.

By Bolaji Moyo · Data to 11 November 2026 · Edition 2026-11-11.9

Key findings

Three and a half years after 29 May 2023, the evidence shows a national balance sheet that is stronger and a household balance sheet that is weaker. Reserves, revenue, oil output and growth have improved, and inflation has come down from its peak. But the naira has lost about two-thirds of its dollar value, fuel costs several times more, poverty estimates have risen, and recorded killings have increased. Whether the national gains reach ordinary households is the question the evidence cannot yet answer, because Nigeria has not published unemployment figures since mid-2024 or a household survey since 2022/23.

1. Growth: real GDP grew 4.43% in Q2 2026, up from 3.04% in 2023 (NBS, rebased series).
2. Inflation: headline inflation peaked at 34.80% in December 2024 and was 14.63% in September 2026; food inflation was 19.59%. The series was rebased in 2025, so the two figures are not strictly comparable.
3. The naira: the official rate moved from N464.67 to N1,350.45 per dollar, a loss of about 66% of its dollar value.
4. Reserves: gross reserves rose about 57%, from USD 35.15 bn to USD 55.22 bn.
5. Fuel: the average petrol price rose about 570%, from N238 to N1,596 a litre (May 2023 to May 2026).
6. Debt: public debt rose from N87.38 trn (June 2023) to N166.79 trn (June 2026), much of it from the naira's fall; as a share of GDP it was about 36% in 2025 (IMF).
7. Revenue: government revenue rose from 7.3% to 10.2% of GDP between 2023 and 2025 (IMF), and interest now takes about half of federal revenue, down from 84% in 2023.
8. Poverty: the World Bank estimates 63% of Nigerians were poor in 2025, against 56% in 2023. These are model estimates, not new survey data.
9. Security: deaths recorded by the Mass Atrocities Tracker rose from 4,416 (2023) to 6,518 (2025).
10. Public opinion: 93% said the country was going in the wrong direction in mid-2024, up from 89% in 2022 (Afrobarometer).

Figures marked as author-supplied come from market observation and word of mouth, not official statistics. Sources are listed in each section and in the open data files.

About this report

Scope. This report covers the period from the inauguration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on 29 May 2023 to 11 November 2026. It compares each measure with its level in May 2023 (or the nearest available period) and with the latest published figure.

Method. Every figure comes from a named source: official statistics (NBS, CBN, DMO, NUPRC, NERC), international institutions (IMF, World Bank, UNESCO), independent trackers and polls, or press reports of these. Where only a press report was available, the source says "reported by". Values are never overwritten: revisions are added as new rows, so changes stay visible. Where a statistical method changed (GDP rebasing in 2025, inflation rebasing in 2025, the 2023 labour survey redesign), the figures are flagged and not chained together as if comparable.

Author-supplied figures. Some household prices and incomes (2023 rice prices, electricity tariffs, school fees, a trader's take-home pay, a remittance amount, one diesel receipt) come from the author's market observation and word of mouth. They are labelled as such, rest on small samples, and should be read as illustrations, not statistics.

Verdicts. Claims are rated Supported, Partly supported, Cannot be verified or Not supported, using the same test for government and opposition.

Disclosure. This independent research project is an initiative of Bolaji Moyo, created to improve public understanding of Nigeria's economic and social conditions under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It is designed to outlast the current administration, so that Nigerians can compare the performance of successive presidents on the same measures.

Bolaji Moyo sets the research direction, poses the critical questions and exercises editorial oversight. Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, supports data gathering, analysis, comparison, explanation and visual presentation.

The project is not commissioned, funded, affiliated with or endorsed by any political party, candidate or government institution, and it does not endorse any candidate, party or voting choice. Its purpose is to present verifiable evidence, distinguish government claims from measurable outcomes, and help readers reach their own conclusions.

Every statistic, interpretation and visualisation is tied to an identifiable source. Consequential AI-generated analysis is checked by the author against its sources, and any unresolved limitations are disclosed.

Right of reply. Any member of the public, official, party or organisation may submit a correction or response, with evidence. Material corrections will be made in the next edition and listed in a corrections log. Send corrections and responses to why9ija@gmail.com. The report and data are at bolajimoyo.com.

Updates. The data are refreshed on the author's request; each new edition begins with a refresh and carries a new edition number.

Where Nigeria stood in May 2023

The administration inherited high inflation, a currency with several exchange rates, a costly petrol subsidy and debt service that consumed nearly all federal revenue.

The Ways and Means jump in June 2023 reflects central bank loans to the previous government being moved onto the debt record; it is not new borrowing by this administration.

The reforms

Four policy changes drive most of what follows.

Petrol subsidy removal (May 2023). The President announced the end of the petrol subsidy in his inaugural address. The average pump price more than doubled within a month (N238 in May to N546 in June 2023, NBS) and reached N1,596 by May 2026. The IMF estimates an implicit subsidy of about N8.43 trn persisted in 2024 through below-market crude supply, and says it ended in October 2024.

Exchange-rate unification (June 2023). The central bank merged its exchange-rate windows and let the naira trade closer to market levels. The official rate went from N464.67 to N907 by December 2023 and N1,535 by December 2024, before recovering to N1,350 in November 2026. The gap between the official and parallel rates narrowed from about 61% to 64% in May 2023 to about 4% to 5% in November 2026.

Monetary tightening (2023 to 2025). The policy rate rose from 18.5% to a peak of 27.5% by late 2024, and has since been cut to 23.0% (September 2026).

Tax reform (in force January 2026). Four tax acts signed on 26 June 2025 exempt people with gross income up to N1.2 m a year and small companies with turnover up to N100 m from income tax. Their effects cannot yet be measured.

Cushioning measures. The minimum wage rose from N30,000 to N70,000 in July 2024; cash transfers have reached about 9.18 m households at least once (target 15 m); student loans have been paid to about 1.39 m students; and a compressed natural gas (CNG) programme has converted vehicles away from petrol.

The pain-to-gain test

Each major reform is put to the same ten questions. Every answer is marked Realised (measured and already happened), Projected (promised or expected, not yet measurable) or Not yet sourced (the evidence is not in this edition). Two patterns stand out: the fiscal and external gains are realised, while most household gains are still projections; and the costs fell first and hardest on fuel buyers, importers and wage earners.

Petrol subsidy removal (May 2023)

Exchange-rate unification (June 2023)

Monetary tightening (2023 to 2025)

Tax reform (in force January 2026)

The four tax acts took effect ten months before this edition, so almost every answer is a projection. Problem: low revenue, 7.3% of GDP in 2023 (IMF), with a heavy burden on low earners and small firms. Sacrifice and who bears it: not yet measurable. Benefit and who receives it: projected; people with gross income up to N1.2 m a year and small companies with turnover up to N100 m are exempt from income tax. Relief: built into the exemptions. Adjustment: too early to judge. Sustainable success would show as: revenue rising as a share of GDP without a rise in poverty, more registered taxpayers and fewer taxes on the poorest. Contradicting evidence: none yet; the record N28.3 trn collected in 2025 predates the acts.

The economy scorecard

Most national indicators are better than in May 2023; the currency and prices are the main exceptions.

Debt in naira nearly doubled, but most of that rise reflects the naira's fall, which inflates the naira value of foreign debt; relative to the economy, debt is about where it was. The rebased GDP series (2025) raised the size of the economy, which lowers all ratios to GDP; ratios before and after rebasing should be compared with care.

The pains: what it costs to live

For a worker who actually receives the N70,000 minimum wage, most staple foods, cooking gas and bus fares take about the same hours of work as in May 2023, because their prices rose 113% to 157% while the wage rose 133%. Fuel and rice are the exceptions. For the many Nigerians whose pay did not rise with the minimum wage, every item is harder to afford.

Sources: NBS price watches, as reported by Nairametrics, NAN, Legit.ng and ThisDay. One Lagos diesel receipt (N1,905 a litre, 30 October 2026) suggests prices have since fallen well below the May 2026 national average.

An illustrative monthly basket (garri, beans, tomato, onion, palm oil, one gas refill and 44 bus trips) cost about N50,700 in May 2023 and about N111,800 now: 169% of the minimum wage then and 160% now. It leaves out rice, rent, electricity, school fees and healthcare.

Other costs (author-supplied). Band A electricity rose from about N68 to N71 per kWh to about N209.50, roughly three times as much; Band B rose only about 13%. School fees of N120,000 (primary) and N180,000 (secondary) a term in 2023 would be about N251,500 and N377,300 today if they had risen with inflation.

Household profiles

Security: killings, banditry and kidnapping

Deaths recorded by the main independent tracker have risen every year since 2023. Abductions remain very high, but the counts available use different methods and periods, so a reliable trend cannot yet be drawn. Nigeria publishes no official, regular security dataset, so the government's claims of improvement cannot be checked.

The NBS survey figure counts kidnappings households reported experiencing, including short ones, so it is far higher than tracker counts based on media reports. Neither method is complete. Trackers based on press reports undercount remote areas.

Two official claims, that terror-related deaths fell 81% since 2015 and that the security situation scores 65% to 70%, are rated Cannot be verified: no dataset was published with either claim, and the first uses a base year eight years before this administration.

Governance and public services

The record is mixed and thinly measured: modest gains on transparency indices and grid stability, little change in power supply, and health spending far below international targets.

Notes: budget shares are allocations, not money released; the Abuja Declaration target for health is 15%. A one- or two-point change in the corruption index may not be statistically meaningful. The out-of-school figures use different definitions and cannot show a trend. Grid-collapse counts are press compilations; there is no official annual count.

The gains: what has been delivered

The clearest gains are in the public finances and external accounts: reserves, revenue, oil output, capital inflows and credit ratings have all improved (see the scorecard). Programme delivery is uneven, and most delivery figures come from the government or programme itself.

None of these entries has been independently verified on site. Which projects were inherited from earlier administrations is still to be established.

What Nigerians think

Public opinion was already very negative before May 2023 and became more so after subsidy removal. Monthly approval recovered from a low in early 2024 but stayed below half.

• Direction of the country: 89% said Nigeria was going in the wrong direction in 2022 and 93% in June to July 2024 (Afrobarometer, 1,600 adults, margin of error 2.5 points). In the same 2024 survey, 88% called the economy bad and 85% disapproved of subsidy removal.
• Approval: NOIPolls' monthly approval was 43% in June 2023, fell to 11% in February 2024, and stood at 36% to 44% in mid-2025. NOIPolls' sample sizes and question wording were not on the pages read.
• Trust: 83% did not trust the federal government in early 2025, the lowest since tracking began in 2019 (Africa Polling Institute, 5,465 interviews).
• 2026: a non-random survey of 829 voters by SBM Intelligence (May 2026) found nearly 80% saying the country was on the wrong track, and 45% naming insecurity as the top issue. It is not comparable with Afrobarometer.

No random-sample survey with a published method after mid-2025 was found.

Nigeria and its peers

High inflation after 2022 was not unique to Nigeria. Peers that went through currency or debt crises have brought inflation down faster; Nigeria's growth outlook is close to the regional average.

Ghana and Egypt started from higher inflation and had IMF-backed programmes; Kenya had no comparable shock. A fair comparison also needs each currency's fall against the dollar and each country's debt ratio, which are still to be added.

External conditions. Oil prices were lower in 2023 than 2022 and fell again in 2025, then rose in 2026. Higher oil prices lift Nigeria's revenue and reserves but raise the cost of imported fuel. The IMF projects global inflation of 4.7% and global growth of 3.1% in 2026. Domestic policy most plausibly explains the size of the naira's fall and the jump in petrol prices after the 2023 reforms; external conditions weigh heavily on oil revenue, imported food and fertiliser, and the cost of foreign borrowing.

Claims and evidence

Sixteen public claims were tested against the data, ten from government and six from the opposition, using the same four verdicts.

Tally: government claims 2 supported, 4 partly supported, 2 cannot be verified, 2 not supported. Opposition claims 1 supported, 1 partly supported, 2 cannot be verified, 2 not supported. Full evidence and links are in claims.csv.

The citizen's evidence checklist

A neutral guide for weighing the record and comparing it with what any party or candidate proposes. It endorses no one.

Verified accomplishments: reserves up 57%; revenue up from 7.3% to 10.2% of GDP; oil output meeting the OPEC quota; inflation down from its December 2024 peak; credit ratings upgraded by all three agencies; fewer grid collapses a year than in 2015 to 2022 (press counts).

Measurable adverse outcomes: naira down about 66% against the dollar; petrol up about 570%; poverty estimated up from 56% to 63%; recorded deaths up from 4,416 to 6,518 a year; state refineries shut; debt service about 23% of the 2026 budget against 5.2% for health.

Policies with mixed effects: subsidy removal (fiscal savings, much higher fuel costs); exchange-rate unification (more reserves, dearer imports); high interest rates (lower inflation alongside dearer credit); Band A tariffs (smaller subsidy, triple the price); cash transfers (9.18 m households paid, short of 15 m).

Promises awaiting implementation: 15 m households on cash transfers; the rest of the coastal highway; working state refineries; a new pay law for office holders.

Outcomes needing more time: the 2026 tax reform; student-loan repayment; whether CNG lowers fares; whether 4% growth reaches household incomes.

Questions the evidence cannot yet answer: current unemployment; current poverty from a survey; the trend in out-of-school children; an official trend in killings and abductions.

Questions to ask any candidate or party:

1. Which of these indicators would you change first, by how much and by when?
2. How would you pay for it?
3. Would you keep, reverse or change subsidy removal and the floating exchange rate, and at what cost?
4. What would you do about the share of revenue spent on interest?
5. How would you measure security and publish the data?
6. Would you restart regular unemployment and household surveys?
7. Which of your promises can citizens check, and where?
8. What did you or your party deliver when last in office, on the same measures?

Gaps and the next edition

This is a first, minimum version. These gaps will be filled in later editions:

• Household profiles: incomes and costs for nine of the fourteen profiles (author to supply).
• Official data not published: unemployment since Q2 2024; a household poverty survey since 2022/23; an official security dataset.
• Data to obtain: ACLED abduction and fatality counts after 2022; peer currency and debt figures from the IMF; Brent oil price averages; distribution-company loss baselines for 2023.
• Claims to resolve: the World Bank report behind the interest-to-revenue claim; gross external borrowing since 2023.
• Upgrades: figures sourced from press reports to be checked against the publishers' own releases before wide circulation.
• Outside review: this edition has not been reviewed by anyone outside the project.

The underlying data (values, sources, claims and assumptions) are published as open CSV files so that anyone can check or reuse them.