• Shock ther­apy alone will not cure Nigeria’s eco­nomic ills
• Tinubu’s reforms need to be bolstered by a national strategy for growth

In the nearly 15 months since Bola Tinubu became pres­id­ent, he has forced his 220mn fel­low Nigeri­ans to swal­low some bit­ter medi­cine. He removed a gen­er­ous fuel sub­sidy, one of the few bene­fits cit­izens receive from their inef­fi­cient and cor­rupt state. He allowed the coun­try’s cur­rency, the naira, to enter freefall, fuel­ling impor­ted infla­tion and trig­ger­ing the worst cost of liv­ing crisis in a gen­er­a­tion.

These meas­ures have pushed tens of mil­lions of already impov­er­ished people deeper into misery. But they were neces­sary to begin cor­rect­ing the coun­try’s long-term eco­nomic demise. The fuel sub­sidy was ruin­ously expens­ive, guzz­ling nearly a third of the fed­eral budget. It was also dis­tor­tion­ary, chan­nel­ling Nigeri­ans’ ener­gies into rent­seek­ing, smug­gling and graft. The exchange rate regime, which vastly over­val­ued the naira, wiped out exports of everything but oil. While genu­ine indus­tries were starved of hard cur­rency, cronies accessed cheap dol­lars to sell on the black mar­ket. Nigeria’s elite learnt a les­son that was toxic to the nation’s pro­spects: why pro­duce any­thing when you can make a killing through arbit­rage?

Mov­ing to more ortho­dox policies is vital to reset an eco­nomy that has not grown in per cap­ita terms for a dec­ade and where one of the most luc­rat­ive indus­tries has been kid­nap­ping. It is neces­sary, but insuf­fi­cient. “Tinubu­n­om­ics” is so dis­join­ted it barely deserves the name. Shock ther­apy will prob­ably fail if import­ant adjust­ments are not made.

First, the pres­id­ent must chart a course ahead and con­vince Nigeri­ans they are in it together. For that to be remotely cred­ible, the polit­ical class must make sac­ri­fices. Out must go lav­ish pay rises for civil ser­vants and flashy cars (not to men­tion jets) for gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Tinubu only has to look at Kenya, where viol­ent street demon­stra­tions have forced the gov­ern­ment to with­draw tax rises, to see what hap­pens when a sense of injustice festers.

Like­wise some sav­ings from the fuel sub­sidy should be redeployed to sup­port the most eco­nom­ic­ally vul­ner­able as a pri­or­ity. Hun­ger levels are soar­ing and mil­lions of chil­dren are fore­go­ing meals and school. Nigerian politi­cians love to be seen hand­ing out bags of rice. But what is needed is dir­ect cash pay­ments to people’s phones, the tech­no­logy for which exists, and in the longerterm a proper safety net.

As things stand, the state lacks either the capa­city or the prob­ity to admin­is­ter such a scheme. Tinubu needs to fix that urgently. With a few excep­tions, his cab­inet is full of light­weights who owe their jobs to polit­ical pat­ron­age, not to expert­ise. Tech­no­cratic tal­ent exists in abund­ance. It must be mar­shalled.

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