Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Dr. Chidi Amuta is Executive Editor of USAfrica, since 1993
A conclave of diverse economists has recently been crowing about the prospects of recovery in the Nigerian economy. It is not strange. Professional economics is a variant of madness. A madman may have no compass indicating where he is coming from or where he is headed. But he keeps going somewhere all the time. Professional economics takes its direction and tangent from where we currently stand, except when prompted to make a back reference to where we are coming from or where we are likely to be heading.
When economics cries disaster, it is from where you stand now. If it crawls recovery, it is also from wherever you stand now. When in a bad situation, elite economists and key government officials begin to sound alike, it is time to wake up to something uncanny in the horizon. If social and economic conditions remain dire and nasty and economists and economic managers begin to spew figures that indicate things are getting better, it is time to take a second look. It is then that the similarity between economics and madness becomes tempting. It is time to invoke the unorthodox equivalence between professional economics and the madness that sends some men and women out into the open streets in stark nakedness.
Otherwise, how does anyone explain or understand the new wave of statistical optimism that has invaded the discourse of economists about the Nigerian economy? Major elite media abroad and official channels in Nigeria are indicating that the Nigerian economy is responding positively to Tinubu’s ‘reform’ measures. The economy grew by 4.3% by the second quarter of 2025, a development driven by an increase in the service and oil sectors. Nominal GDP stood at $188 billion by end of 2024. Inflation has dropped from a frightening 33.2% to 18.02% in September and is still falling. Real GDP growth rate is now 4.2% as at the first quarter of 2025. Food inflation is falling but remains high. The exchange rate has remained erratic, and the country’s external reserves have inched up. somewhat stabilized but remains unsteady at its all-time high rates.
With this flutter of erratic figures, key Western media and agencies have sounded an optimistic note that Nigeria is on the way to general improvement and even recovery. When asked when improved statistics will translate into better living conditions for the people, silence is the answer. The World Bank , IMF and their affiliate banks in Washington and Wall Street have carried the message of conditional optimism. Whenever I sense the discord between the optimism of these economists and the bleak conditions under which most Nigerians are living, I heave a sigh of relief that I never became an economist.
When your profession dictates that you tell a different set of lies to earn a living but return home every day to face your family who have to endure a persisting hardship, your life becomes either a comedy or an exercise in day-to-day lies. Ordinary Nigerians cannot understand what the government and its client economists mean in their latest optimistic chorus. Food remains unaffordable despite some relief from emergency importation. The price of gasoline remains too high and therefore, transportation costs remain too high. An avalanche of taxes have been unleashed on the populace, while a new barrage will be rolled out by the year’s end.
The unemployment figures remain beyond imagination, even though economists have based and rebased the indices of unemployment. A Gen Z revolt remains an ever-present prospect in Nigeria after what has been experienced in Kenya, Algeria, Bangladesh, Tanzania and Nepal. Protests fueled by hunger and hardship in Nigeria are being periodically and systematically smuggled into existing popular struggles like police brutality, the release of Nnamdi Kanu and bad governance. Young Nigerians are asking for better living conditions, jobs for themselves, welfare for their parents and grandparents, as well as better education, healthcare and increased safety.
The mood of the nation is still one of utter hopelessness. Between the government’s sloganeering around the theme of ‘renewed hope’ and the situation on the ground, there is a yawning gap. The general question on most lips is simply this: how can this bleakness nurture hope? Only the insane can harbor hope in this wilderness of want and deprivation. How can people who are hungry, homeless, sick and dirt poor commit to a future of renewed hope. Add to this the insecurity which has become endemic and systemic. On the highways and urban precincts, on village farm routes, uncertainty and violence is everywhere and the security and law enforcement agencies have no convincing response. There is no consequence even for the most heinous crimes and offences. In most parts of the country, armed bloody conflicts have torn communities that used to live together in harmony apart. The community next door is enemy territory as small fights over grazing fields and farming space have often degenerated into bloody communal conflagrations with economic and religious colourations.
There is nothing in the conduct of the state and its key officials to support the optimism of official economists except the political contests over the 2027 elections. The incumbent administration wants to be seen as performing. It is desirous to see Tinubu’s tragic policy gambles as evidence of well intentioned reform. On its part, the political opposition wants to say that the nation has been defrauded by a ruling party that has wasted ten years driving the nation under a broken bus. What has deepened the crisis of hardship in the country is the inability of state and local governments in most of the country to translate the increases in revenue from the fuel subsidy removal and foreign exchange deregulation into socially beneficial services and infrastructure.
In bad economic situations, governments can court increased foreign direct investment as an impetus to increase family incomes through increased employment. The rate of inflow of such investment into Nigeria remains bleak as Nigeria continues to make bad international news. Currently, the major political news is the uncovering of a coup plan by military officers aimed at dethroning Mr. Tinubu and his friends from power. The news of political instability cannot encourage investors to head for Nigeria. Add to that the latest categorization of Nigeria as a hostile environment for Christians. The Trump administration has issued a declaration to that effect, thereby increasing Nigeria’s economic burden.
The favourite proviso of all economic projections- “all things being equal”- hits the rock in every direction in Nigeria. Nothing is ‘equal’ or rational in this place. What remains constant, however, is the ceaseless bungling of government and the relentless devaluation of the lives of ordinary people.
