Notes on the Economy

TANIMU YAKUBU

When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration dismantled Nigeria’s rigid foreign exchange regime in 2023, critics were quick to call it a currency collapse. The naira plunged to N1,800 per dollar in March 2024, and headlines screamed of economic freefall. But beneath the noise, a deliberate, high-risk economic recalibration was underway—one that has now begun to pay off in spectacular fashion.

By August 2025, the naira had clawed its way back to N1,525/$1, marking a 15.28% strengthening in just five months—an annualised pace of nearly 48.9%. This wasn’t luck; it was policy. Increased oil receipts, swelling diaspora remittances, and the clearing of over $4 billion in foreign exchange backlogs restored investor trust. The unification of Nigeria’s FX windows created a single, transparent market rate—finally letting the currency find its realistic value.
Why does this matter? Because a realistic exchange rate does more than please economists—it changes the very arithmetic of trade. Nigerian goods, once overpriced in dollars due to an artificially strong naira, suddenly became bargains on global markets. A bag of sesame seeds, cocoa beans, or even processed chocolate instantly cost less in New York, Mumbai, or São Paulo, without the Nigerian farmer or factory owner earning less in naira terms.
The result was swift and striking. Non-oil exports jumped from $2.696 billion in H1 2024 to $3.225 billion in H1 2025—a 19.62% year-on-year growth. And this wasn’t just a “price illusion.” Export volumes rose from 3.83 million to 4.04 million metric tonnes, proof that foreign buyers weren’t just paying more for the same goods—they were buying more goods, period.

• A perfect “sweet spot” had emerged:
• For buyers abroad, Nigerian goods were cheaper than competitors’.
• For exporters at home, the naira value of earnings soared, enabling reinvestment into value-added processing—turning raw cocoa into chocolate bars, raw sesame into bottled oil.
• For the economy, the export surge pumped foreign exchange back into the system, strengthening the naira without eroding its competitiveness.

The feedback loop is textbook economics:
FX Reform Realistic Naira
Cheaper USD Prices Export Boom
Export Boom FX Inflows
FX Inflows Naira Stability
Naira Stability Investor Confidence & Long-Term Growth
What’s remarkable is that this cycle feeds itself. As Nigerian goods win more market share globally, the inflow of export dollars reinforces naira stability. That stability lowers risk for investors, inviting portfolio and capital inflows that further bolster reserves.
The critics who cried “worthless naira” missed the bigger picture: a floating currency is not a sign of weakness—it is a tool for national competitiveness. By refusing to prop up the naira with scarce reserves and instead letting market forces work, the Tinubu administration has set the stage for a sustainable, export-driven growth path.
If Nigeria stays the course, the naira’s recovery won’t just be about exchange rates—it will be the story of an economy finally learning how to turn its currency into a competitive weapon on the world stage.
Every great nation carries its strength not only in its armies or its resources, but in its money. A currency is more than paper or digits; it is a flag in our pockets, a contract with our people, and, when made credible, a weapon in the global marketplace.
Today, our currency too often wobbles under pressure, retreating when it should be advancing. But this is not destiny. This is a choice. And today, I lay before you a vision—and a roadmap—for how we can transform the naira from fragile paper into competitive ammunition for the world.
The 100 days: Laying the Foundation
The first forge is credibility.
In the first 100 days, we must clean the slate. Every backlog of foreign exchange must be settled or transparently accounted for. A single, unified exchange rate must emerge, visible to all, trusted by all. Inflation must be tackled with clarity, and savers must be rewarded with real returns.
This is the discipline of a soldier cleaning his weapon before battle. Without credibility, no currency can march abroad.
The First Year: Building Trust and Utility
Once credibility is forged, we must make the naira holdable—trusted and usable.
Within the first year, we must open deep and transparent markets, where investors can hedge, where businesses can plan, and where contracts are honored without fear.
We must also create demand. Our exports of electricity, gas, and services must increasingly be priced in naira. Our ports and borders must accept naira as payment. Our neighbors must begin to see our currency not as an option, but as a necessity.
And we must empower our diaspora—the millions who send billions home each year. In the first year, remittances must be instant, seamless, and rewarding in naira. Their loyalty can become a lifeline of strength.
The Five-Year Horizon: Deployment and Resilience
By the five-year horizon, our goal must be nothing less than transformation.
A currency others hold, not because we plead, but because they cannot trade without it. A currency trusted across West Africa, settling power bills, financing trade, and flowing through digital rails as naturally as water flows downstream.
By then, we must also have resilience: stabilization funds for shocks, reserve rules for discipline, and alliances that provide fallback strength. For storms will come. Oil prices will fall, capital will flee, inflation will threaten. But a true currency of power is one that survives the storm and emerges stronger.
The Vision: From Defense to Deployment
The true measure of success will not be whether we can defend the naira. The true measure will be whether others must use it.
The day we stop asking, “How do we protect the naira?” and instead declare, “Here is the naira—use it,” is the day we will know we have succeeded. That is when our money will cease to be a burden, and will become ammunition—quiet, powerful, respected—in the arsenal of our national sovereignty.
Conclusion: Manufacturing Power
Let us be clear: we cannot talk our way to a strong currency. We must manufacture it.
In 100 days, credibility.
In one year, trust and demand.
In five years, deployment and resilience.
Step by step, discipline by discipline, trade by trade, remittance by remittance—we can forge the naira into something others cannot ignore.
This is the mission. This is the moment. To turn our money into might. To make the naira not just defended but deployed. To place our flag not only in our pockets, but in the very contracts and settlements of the world.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the future we must build.
Northwest: The Lion’s Share of Tinubu’s Projects
The Lagos Illusion
A viral chart recently made the rounds, loudly proclaiming that Lagos alone received N3.9 trillion worth of federal projects.
To the casual observer, it seemed a damning indictment: as if the federal treasury had been converted into a Lagos development fund.
But closer inspection tells a different story. That chart bundles together national infrastructure—federal highways, coastal transport corridors,
and strategic legacy roads—and labels them “Lagos-only projects.” By that logic, the Kano–Maiduguri expressway could just as easily be called a “Maiduguri-only project.” Such sleight of hand ignores a central truth: these are not local trophies. They are the arteries of a national economy.
When properly disaggregated, Lagos’ exclusive projects—airport fencing, Carter Bridge rehabilitation, localized upgrades—amount to about N1.2 trillion.
The much touted N2.7 trillion are highways and transport links passing through Lagos but serve the entire federation. In short, Lagos is not swallowing the budget.
What is happening is far more important: Nigeria is being stitched together, city to city, region to region, economy to economy.
The Northwest Reality
The real numbers paint a very different picture:

North West: N5.97 trillion (over 40% of all approvals)
South South: N2.41 trillion
North Central: N1.13 trillion
South East: N407 billion
North East: N400 billion
South West (excluding Lagos): N604 billion
Lagos (exclusive projects): N1.2 trillion
The conclusion is inescapable. The Northwest—not Lagos—holds the lion’s share of federal projects. By every measure, it is the single largest beneficiary of President Tinubu’s approvals.
Infrastructure as National Glue, Not Constituency Trophy
This is where the debate must shift. Infrastructure should never be reduced to a regional scoreboard, as though every road is a prize to be shared
and every bridge a trophy to be flaunted. Roads, rail, and power plants are not gifts to a favored constituency—they are the veins and lifelines of one national economy.
The farmer in Katsina needs a market in Lagos. The trader in Aba depends on goods flowing through Kano. The student in Sokoto requires the national grid as much
as her counterpart in Port Harcourt. Federal projects must be understood as national investments designed to connect Nigeria to itself, and ultimately to the world.
The real prize is not the ribbon-cutting in any one location. The prize is the commerce, energy, and opportunity that flow across borders once those roads and power plants are in place.
Tinubu’s Northwest Compact
Let us speak plainly: without the Northwest, there would be no Tinubu presidency. The President knows this. He has neither forgotten nor been ungrateful.
Consider the Kaduna Power Plant (255MW)—conceived under the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua but abandoned for years. Today, under Tinubu, it is being revived.
That plant is not merely a power project; it is a symbol of continuity, recognition, and reward for the North.
Add to this the Kaduna–Kano expressway, the Kano–Maiduguri highway, the Sokoto–Illela corridor, and unprecedented investments in education and security infrastructure.
These are not footnotes. They are the backbone of a deliberate Northwest-first investment strategy—kilometre by kilometre, megawatt by megawatt.
The Coming Beltway Transformation
And this is only the beginning. By the time the Tinubu National Beltway Project is prepared and approved—a bold L-shaped corridor connecting Calabar in the
South South to Maiduguri in the North East, and from there across to Sokoto in the North West—Nigeria’s infrastructural map will be redrawn.
This single project will bind together the South South, North Central, North East, and North West in an unbroken chain of modern highways, economic corridors, and logistics hubs. It will not only transform those regions, but also unlock a continental trade artery.
Above all, it will be the national economy and our productive citizens—farmers, traders, manufacturers, transporters—that will benefit most. With faster connectivity,
reduced logistics costs, and greater market access, wealth creation will spread, and prosperity will deepen.
That is the logic of national infrastructure: not as a prize to be shared, but as a platform for shared growth.
Propaganda vs. Progress
The danger of the viral infographic is not its statistical error alone. It is the deliberate attempt to incite division: Lagos versus Kano, Southwest against Northwest,
one region’s progress pitched as another’s exclusion. That is not budgeting. That is political blackmail.
But Nigerians are wiser. The record is clear:
Lagos remains Nigeria’s commercial hub, rightly upgraded.
The Northwest is Nigeria’s electoral fortress, richly rewarded.
Every region receives its due, because Tinubu budgets for one economy, one country, one people.
Beyond Rumors: A Record Written in Concrete and Kilowatts
History will not remember colorful viral graphics. It will remember the farmers in Katsina whose produce now reaches new markets, the lights in Kaduna powered by Yar’Adua’s plant,
revived by Tinubu, and the schools and hospitals rising across Sokoto and Zamfara.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has not marginalized the North. He has trusted it, invested in it, and rewarded it.
That is the record. That is the fact. That is the truth.
And no infographic, however deceptive, can bury it.