In his broadcast to mark Nigeria’s 66TH Independence anniversary, President Bola Tinubu raised several issues pointing to his assessment of his track record in office since May 29 2023 and the future he envisages for the country. Themed ‘From Reforms to Prosperity’, the text was vintage Tinubu – evocative in content and delivered with panache. This is also as it was rich in self-praising achievements in the area of the economy, which he illustrated with impressive statistics as expected of a politician in the course of a campaign for a second term in office.

Significantly as it was, he avoided attention to several other areas of the nation’s life, like insecurity, ostensibly due to the paucity of claims to boost his credit and little to boast about.

However, not a few Nigerians had expected from his address some more grounded references to the true state of life in the country beyond the routine claims of progress, especially with respect to the economy and the citing of forthcoming dividends – that is if his prescriptions and trajectory are followed.

Considering that in the widely stratified Nigerian economy, with the population divided in terms of access to opportunities, between the extremely rich minority and the extremely poor majority, not a few Nigerians appraise the broadcast from a more eclectic perspective. In a sense, they are asking of what the president had to offer to hard-pressed Nigerians to accentuate his concern beyond words of mouth and that granting him a second term in office will be better for Nigeria.

In that context, hardly any other message assuages the populace than one of some soft landing, no matter how late such may be.

Considering that the Tinubu reforms (in all their merit) were launched into an ill-prepared citizenry, and have lasted for three half years without let-up, the Independence Day broadcast should have offered some modicum of relief for the hard-pressed citizenry. Hence, for most Nigerians, the broadcast simply passed (in a take-it-or-leave manner), the message that the reforms are continuing without let or hindrance; and in particular, no soft landing for now. This is as if they were conceived with divine ‘inspiration, and hence; are inviolable’.

Hence too, the strangulations will continue, unabated. The hunger and hardship will also continue, just as the president’s indifference to the psyche of Nigerians will also continue.

Meanwhile, Nigerians are also entering into the next electoral season without any special consideration from the president, except the hackneyed claim of the ‘Tinubu reforms are working’, and the chant of on ‘Tinubu’s mandate we shall stand.’

Taken further, what matters more to the president and his team is the fixation with citing their perception of the gains of the reforms (real and perceived), in denial of what matters to the rest of Nigerians, being the denial of pangs of the excruciating reforms, which have rendered most citizens relatively and even absolutely, destitute.

With respect to the 2026 broadcast, Tinubu alludes to the scenario of Nigerians ‘crossing the Red Sea,’ and therefore, should look forward to the future, towards the prospects of shared prosperity in the days ahead.

Good talk it is, but given that a future is built on the past, the current foundation on which Nigerians are grappling with is the syndrome of shared poverty, with the prospects of shared prosperity still a pie in the sky.

Perhaps far from the contemplations of the administration is the fact that Nigeria is in an unhappy state as predicted by the great economist, Adam Smith, that no society can be happy with the majority of its citizens steeped in poverty.

Hence, the 2026 broadcast by Tinubu was to a citizenry still striving to recover from the pangs of his reforms, no soft landing. To say that the broadcast may have any effect beyond a perfunctory context to most Nigerians may be claiming too much. Because for now, what most Nigerians are bothered with is how to get the next meal, the next school fees for the children and the next year’s rent, as well as medical bills for the next health emergency. It is significant that even Tinubu appreciates this reality.

However, what he did not mention in his broadcast are some aspects of the reforms that need to be ventilated here. And they border on the acts of omission and commission by the administration in the course of the past three and half years.

For instance, one of the oft cited aspects of the Tinubu reforms is the increase in government’s revenue, courtesy of the removal of fuel subsidy, and the resultant transmission of same to the sub-national administrations comprising the states and local government councils.

It is, however, undeniable to even his kitchen cabinet, that hardly can any defence be provided for the recklessness that trailed the sudden inflow of unprecedented largesse for these administrations, with their respective top officials seeing such windfalls as open cheques for spending public funds and personal aggrandizement.

While Tinubu may be reeling off the dividends of his reforms, he needs to also appreciate the deepening shared poverty – from the huge losses accruing from wastages of public funds that percolated – to the lower tiers of governance.

That is Nigeria at the time of his broadcast.

Meanwhile, happy 66th Independence anniversary to our dear country, Nigeria. (Daily Trust)

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