Nigeria today increasingly resembles a nation confined to a hospital ward, with a patient who refuses to take prescribed medication. The symptoms are glaring, the pain unmistakable, and the diagnosis repeatedly confirmed by experts, institutions and the lived realities of ordinary citizens. Yet the administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu continues to act in denial, insisting all is well while the body politic weakens by the day.
In this intervention, Laureta Onochie, a former aide in the administration of late President Muhammadu Buhari, argues that Nigeria’s worsening condition is no longer a matter of opinion but of evidence. Citing data from the World Bank, she notes that tens of millions of Nigerians have been pushed into poverty in less than two years of the current administration, warning that even more citizens could fall below the poverty line by 2027 if present policies persist.
According to her, such grim statistics should ordinarily compel a responsible government to pause, reassess and urgently change course. Instead, she contends, the Tinubu administration has responded with rigidity and obstinacy, choosing policy inflexibility over empathy at a time when hunger has become widespread and survival a daily struggle for many households.
She describes the defining character of the administration not as reform-driven but as indifferent to public suffering. Nigerians, she argues, voiced their fears when fuel subsidy removal was announced without adequate safety nets, and their cries grew louder as food prices soared, transport costs skyrocketed, small businesses folded and wages stagnated amid runaway inflation. Rather than meaningful engagement, she says, the response from government has largely been technocratic explanations that fail to address lived realities.
In her view, while a struggling government may be forgiven, one that refuses corrective measures cannot. She insists that economic reforms, no matter how noble in intent, must be humane, warning that shock therapy without cushioning amounts to cruelty, and austerity without compassion becomes punishment.
Onochie also faults what she describes as a widening communication gap between government and citizens, arguing that Nigerians are increasingly talked at rather than engaged. Complaints of hunger, she says, are met with calls for patience, while protests against hardship are dismissed or delegitimised—an approach she warns is dangerous in a democratic setting.
She maintains that workable alternatives exist, including targeted social protection, genuine wage reviews, phased reforms, reduced cost of governance, investment in local production and policies that prioritise food security over rigid fiscal dogma. According to her, many countries have adjusted course when economic pain became unbearable, but such adjustment requires humility.
Nigeria, she argues, is not demanding miracles but relief, empathy and leadership that recognises poverty figures as human lives—families skipping meals, children dropping out of school and youths losing faith in the future. History, she warns, is rarely kind to governments that ignore mass suffering, noting that propaganda cannot silence empty stomachs or erase daily hardship.
She concludes that the Tinubu administration stands at a crossroads: it can persist in denial, insisting the patient is healthy while the illness worsens, or accept the diagnosis and embrace people-centred governance that offers a pathway to healing. Nigeria, she asserts, is sick—but it is the refusal of government to take the necessary medicine that threatens to make the illness fatal.
