Today makes it exactly a year since Bola Ahmed Tinubu stepped into office as Nigeria’s fifth president in the post-military years. Within minutes of his inauguration, the president made the very consequential decision that has for the most part directed the course of his administration and defined his presidency as a costly political entreprise in the national imagination- the removal of the subsidy on petroleum.
To be sure, all that President Bola Tinubu’s policies achieved has been to worsen the condition of an economy that was not only bad but had been on the verge of falling into a coma. His was an inherited burden. Neither he nor the policies he initiated were the origin of the problem, which was an accretion of disastrous decisions, policy failures and unspeakable corruption that came to a head under the bumbling Muhammadu Buhari regime.
Ever since the momentous decision to remove subsidy and float the naira was made, the Tinubu administration has been struggling to gain control of the economy and convince Nigerians that it did not come into office primarily to complete the demolition job Buhari started on assumption of duty in 2015. That, the annihilation of struggling Nigerians, would appear to be the ultimate solution to the problem of poverty in the country.