26 March, 2026
Three years. In the span of a single presidential term, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has orchestrated the systematic demolition of Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and most populous nation. What was sold as “Renewed Hope” has become a calculated autopsy of national sabotage: record poverty devouring millions, debt exploding like a fiscal time bomb, security collapsing into a profit-driven bloodbath of terror and kidnapping, regional influence shattered by arrogant overreach, and a sophisticated machinery of media manipulation that paints this engineered collapse as triumphant progress. This is not governance by accident or inherited misfortune. It is deliberate, data-verified sabotage, executed with ruthless precision while a chorus of paid influencers, captured media outlets, and social media mercenaries proclaim Tinubu a genius, a master strategist, and a political legend. In reality, those very pawns are victims in a larger game of deception—duped into selling illusion as substance, their loyalty weaponized to obscure the corpses piling up under Tinubu’s watch.
The evidence is irrefutable, drawn from the World Bank, IMF, World Food Programme, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Chatham House, the Global Terrorism Index, ACLED conflict data, Media Rights Agenda, Reporters Without Borders, and Nigeria’s own Debt Management Office. No deniability remains. Every negative index has worsened under Tinubu’s three-year reign of ruin. Let us dissect the corpse.
Begin with poverty—the human cost that exposes the lie at the heart of Tinubu’s “reforms.” The World Bank’s Nigeria Development Update of October 2025 is unambiguous: Nigeria’s poverty headcount has surged to an estimated 139 million people—roughly 61-62 percent of the population—by late 2025, a sharp acceleration from pre-Tinubu levels. The share below the national poverty line rose to 56 percent in 2024 alone, adding some 20 million more souls to the abyss. Rural poverty stands at a crushing 75.5 percent; urban at 31 percent. Multidimensional poverty, already at 63 percent (133 million) in the 2022 NBS survey before Tinubu took office, has accelerated under his policies. The World Bank’s own October 2025 report states plainly: “Many households continue to face hardship, with poverty and food insecurity remaining high.” Poor households now spend up to 70 percent of their income on food. A basic food basket costs five times what it did in 2019. Food inflation peaked above 40 percent, with overall inflation hitting a 28-year high of 34.8 percent in December 2024.
The IMF’s 2025 Article IV Consultation echoes the indictment: “Gains have yet to benefit all Nigerians as poverty and food insecurity remain high.” Poverty was estimated at 46 percent in 2024, with inflation stubbornly above 20 percent. The World Food Programme’s Cadre Harmonisé analysis from November 2024 onward projects 33.1 million Nigerians facing acute food insecurity in 2025, rising to 35 million in the 2026 lean season—the highest on record. WFP explicitly links this crisis to “economic hardship,” record inflation (food at 40.9 percent, overall 34.2 percent in mid-2024), naira devaluation, and “ policy changes on discontinuation of the fuel subsidy.” WFP Country Representative David Stevenson warned: “The hunger crisis in Nigeria is fueled by the ongoing conflict in the northeast and needs to be urgently addressed.” Yet Tinubu’s administration claimed to have offered cash transfers to a mere 15 million households—band-aids on a hemorrhaging wound—while petrol prices skyrocketed from ₦254 to over ₦1300 per litre and naira devaluation exceeded 40 percent. This is policy-induced immiseration, not misfortune. Households have collapsed under the weight; school attendance has plummeted; mass protests like #EndBadGovernance erupted in raw desperation. Tinubu’s response? Lethal force and arrests, as Human Rights Watch documented in its World Report 2025. The IMF warned of “rising social hardship” and “public discontent over tariffs.” Confront this reality: Tinubu’s reforms did not stabilize; they starved a nation.
The fiscal ledger reveals the same engineered overload. Public debt in naira terms has detonated under Tinubu’s watch. Debt Management Office figures are damning: ₦87.38 trillion (approximately $113.42 billion) in June 2023, shortly after inauguration, ballooned to ₦152.4 trillion by June 2025—a 74 percent leap in just two years. By September 2025, it stood at approximately ₦153.29 trillion. Debt service projections exceed ₦91 trillion for 2023–2028, with annual costs climbing to ₦15.9 trillion in 2026 and ₦19.8 trillion in 2027–2028. In 2023 alone, actual debt service overshot the budget: ₦8.56 trillion paid versus ₦6.56 trillion budgeted. The debt-to-revenue ratio remains crippling at over 111 percent. While officials boast of modest USD-denominated debt reductions through revaluation and reserves, the naira burden has become a strangling noose, crowding out infrastructure, health, and education. Per capita debt now approaches ₦633,000. Domestic borrowing, including Ways and Means from the Central Bank, and Eurobond issuances such as $2.2 billion in 2024 have sustained deficits. Critics rightly label this a “borrowing presidency.” Tinubu’s fiscal sabotage is not sustainable; it is suicidal, designed to mortgage Nigeria’s future while the present burns.
Security under Tinubu is not inherited chaos—it is a metastasizing national emergency turned profit-seeking industry. The 2026 Global Terrorism Index ranks Nigeria fourth most terror-affected country globally, up from prior positions, with Nigeria and four others accounting for 70 percent of terrorism deaths worldwide. It recorded one of the two largest increases in terror deaths. Banditry and terror have blurred into a criminal-jihadist nexus, with new hybrid groups like Lakurawa emerging. ACLED data for May 2023 to May 2025 records 7,472 killed and 12,584 abducted by terror and bandit groups alone. The 2024 peak saw 3,134 fatalities and 2,562 kidnappings across 916 incidents; early 2025 remained horrific with 1,255 deaths in the first four months. Broader violence in January–February 2026 claimed another 1,258 lives. SBM Intelligence documented 4,722 kidnappings (997 incidents) from July 2024 to June 2025, with 762 killed and ransoms totaling ₦2.23 trillion (approximately $1.42–1.66 billion) from May 2023 to April 2024. The National Human Rights Commission recorded 3,012 kidnappings and 3,584 killings between January 2024 and April 2025. Mass school abductions persist—hundreds of students taken in echoes of Chibok—while Boko Haram and ISWAP have resurged in the Northeast, banditry ravages the Northwest and North-Central (Plateau and Benue massacres killing dozens per incident), and over 1,680 students have been abducted historically with fresh spikes under Tinubu.
Amnesty International’s verdict after two years in office is devastating: “Today marks exactly two years since President Bola Tinubu assumed office with a promise to enhance security. Instead, things have only gotten worse, as the authorities continue to fail to protect the rights to life, physical integrity, liberty and the security of tens of thousands of people… The recent escalation of attacks by Boko Haram and other armed groups shows that the security measures implemented by President Tinubu’s government are simply not working.” Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2025 details “persistent killings, kidnappings, and violent raids by so-called bandit gangs” in the Northwest and North-Central, Boko Haram/ISWAP resurgence (over 200 IDPs abducted in Borno, 170 killed in Yobe), and lethal crackdowns on #EndBadGovernance protesters, including treason charges against minors. Economic reforms exacerbated hardship with “little government cushioning” amid lavish presidential spending. Security forces’ abuses—civilian-killing airstrikes—continue with near-zero accountability. Tinubu replaced security chiefs and claimed neutralizations, yet violence displaces communities, closes schools, and thrives as an industry. This is not failure; it is strategic neglect that allows death to become currency.
Abroad, Tinubu’s “4D” foreign policy—Democracy, Demography, Development, Diaspora—has been all spectacle, no substance. Seventeen-plus foreign trips in the first year alone, one every four days early on, burned resources while domestic hunger surged. Lavish delegations drew justified outrage for their cost amid poverty. Chatham House’s March 2026 analysis is merciless: “But nearly three years into Tinubu’s presidency, the key question is whether this visibility-driven foreign policy has delivered domestic gains. So far, the president’s prominent international profile has not largely translated into improvements in material conditions for most Nigerians.” Trips “have drawn criticism for their cost amid rising poverty, hunger and falling purchasing power back home.” “Measured against the core test of governance—whether citizens are safer, less poor and more hopeful—the dividends of Tinubu’s foreign policy have been marginal so far.” Security partnerships improved technical capacity but “have not produced discernible improvement in everyday security. Killings, kidnappings and displacement remain widespread.” Diplomatic capacity lagged behind rhetoric due to politicized appointments. Reforms recall 1980s “shock therapy” with “lasting social costs.”
Relations with neighbors expose the overreach. As ECOWAS chairman (elected 2023, re-elected 2024), Tinubu’s aggressive response to the 2023 Niger coup—sanctions and military threats—backfired spectacularly. It ignored cultural and ethnic ties, fueled junta backlash, and triggered the Alliance of Sahel States (Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso) exit from ECOWAS effective 2025. Nigeria’s “big brother” role eroded; terrorism spread tenfold since 2009. Even Benin saw Nigerian/ECOWAS intervention in a foiled 2025 coup, but the regional bloc is fractured. Broader Sahel fallout weakened cooperation. This is not leadership; it is isolation born of arrogance.
Yet the true dark genius lies in the deliberate deception—the near-total control of narrative that sustains the sabotage. Tinubu’s regime has weaponized media, social media, and a vast army of paid influencers to portray collapse as renaissance. Media Rights Agenda’s July 2025 mid-term assessment report, “The Onslaught Intensifies,” documented 141 incidents of attacks on journalists, media workers, and ordinary citizens for peaceful expression between May 29, 2023, and May 29, 2025. Police perpetrated 61 cases (43.26 percent); the Department of State Services seven (4.96 percent). The primary tool: misuse of the Cybercrimes Act to silence critics of governance, economic hardship, and security failures. Reporters Without Borders’ 2025 World Press Freedom Index dropped Nigeria ten places to 122nd out of 180, citing hyper-concentration of media ownership in the hands of political figures and elites close to power, compromising editorial independence. A $9 million U.S. lobbying contract with a Washington firm—revealed in early 2026—has been slammed as naked foreign image-laundering while Nigerians face daily killings and kidnappings.
This is classic authoritarian playbook executed with modern precision. Paid influencers and captured outlets flood platforms with selective “scorecards,” hired “critics” neutralized by government appointments, and sponsored content that drowns out funerals in favor of foreign trip headlines. Inflation eases slightly on revised methodology? Victory declared. Mass abduction? Blame “inherited insecurity.” " opposition figures" Northern opposition etc. The machine deliberately obscures reality, normalises mass hardship, and distracts from challenges. Influencers paint Tinubu as genius, master strategist, political legend—yet they are pawns, victims in the larger deception. They believe the cult because, as Robert Greene writes in *The 48 Laws of Power* (Law 27: Play on People’s Need to Believe to Create a Cultlike Following): “People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. Keep your words vague but full of promise; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking.” These influencers, chasing relevance and stipends, become the spectacle that overwhelms thought—exactly as Greene warns: “Give your new disciples rituals to perform, and ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf.” They are not architects; they are deceived participants in their own nation’s hollowing.
Tinubu himself embodies the philosophers of power. Niccolò Machiavelli warned in *The Prince*: “Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.” And “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.” Tinubu appears the reformer; the reality is national demolition. “The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.” “Men in general judge more by the eye than by the hand.” Baltasar Gracián in *The Art of Worldly Wisdom* nails the concealment: “Folly consists not in committing Folly, but in being incapable of concealing it. All men make mistakes, but the wise conceal the blunders they have made, while fools make them public. Reputation depends more on what is hidden than on what is seen.” And “Cunning grows in deceit at seeing itself discovered, and tries to deceive with truth itself.” Sun Tzu’s *Art of War* is the playbook: “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.” Appear weak when strong, strong when weak. Tinubu’s regime attacks while claiming reform, deceives while claiming transparency. The influencers, like Gracián’s fools, publicize the blunders as brilliance—unwitting victims convinced they serve a legend.
This is no accident. It is sabotage elevated to statecraft: poverty weaponized, debt as shackles, death as distraction, deception as doctrine. Three years have turned promise into peril, hope into hunger, leadership into legerdemain. The clinical record from every reputable authority stands as indictment. Nigerians must confront the autopsy before the patient is declared terminal. History will not be kind. The evidence already is not. Tinubu’s three-year masterclass in national destruction ends here—not with renewal, but with ruin laid bare for all to see. The deception ends when the people refuse to be its pawns.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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