Tanimu Yakubu, Director General (DG) of the Budget Office of the Federation, on Sunday said President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms, also known as Tinubunomics, were never intended to guarantee “instant abundance.”
Yakubu, while correcting some erroneous conclusions drawn by critics about the expected outcomes of Tinubu’s reforms, described them as “a macro-fiscal reset undertaken within hard constraints.”
These constraints include inherited debt service, foreign exchange realism, security spending, legacy arrears, and competing constitutional obligations.
Read also: New tax laws to take off in January 1, Tinubu insists
Yakubu said “its logic is structural- restoring price signals, strengthening revenue administration, rebuilding credibility, and re-pricing the public balance sheet while protecting the most vulnerable.”
He stated that “those who insist on treating national finance as a household ledger will always find scandal where none exists
“But accountability does not begin with social media addiction. It starts with audit logic.”
He counselled that the proper way to interrogate government performance is simply by examining “federal retained revenue; separating it clearly from financing; track expenditure across debt service, personnel, capital, and transfers; and then assess outputs—roads built, power delivered, rail extended, schools and clinics rehabilitated.
“Anything else is not subject to scrutiny. It is a theatre.”
He concluded that “no amount of theatrical arithmetic can substitute for fiscal discipline.”
Yakubu, while taking a deeper assessment of the criticisms of the Tinubu’s economic reforms, noted that a “striking feature of Nigeria’s current economic debate is the enthusiasm with which huge numbers are circulated—and the casualness with which they are assembled.”
According to him, “Tax collections are added to oil receipts; oil receipts are added again under customs or “subsidy savings”; borrowing is treated as income; and the resulting total is presented as proof of incompetence or theft.
“This is not an economic analysis. It is an arithmetic illusion.
“At the core of most viral critiques of Tinubunomics lies a fundamental failure to distinguish between revenue, cash, and financing, and between federation-wide collections and federal budgetary resources. These are not technicalities. They are the foundation of public finance.”
Yakubu explained that “revenue is not the same as cash available to the Federal Government. Borrowing is not income; it is financing and creates future obligations. Federation receipts are not equivalent to what the Federal Government can spend.
“Once these distinctions are ignored, any number—no matter how dramatic—can be manufactured.
“The familiar pattern runs as follows. Aggregate tax collections are cited, often correctly, in gross terms. Oil revenues are then added without clarifying whether they are gross or net, federation-wide or federally retained, or whether costs, deductions, and under-recoveries have been netted off. Customs receipts are layered on, sometimes without stating whether they are already embedded in non-oil revenue totals. Borrowing is then added as though it were free money. Finally, “subsidy savings” are thrown into the mix, as if stopping a fiscal leak produces a vault of idle cash.
“The result is a large headline number—₦150 trillion, ₦170 trillion, ₦180 trillion—followed by the question: where did the money go?
“The answer is straightforward: much of it never existed in the form being implied.”
Yakubu also corrected the wrong impression of equating subsidy reform to “discretionary cash”, adding that instead, “it closes a hole.”
“Subsidy reform, for instance does not conjure discretionary cash. It closes a hole. Under the old regime, underpricing manifested through arrears, opaque netting, and quasi-fiscal obligations.
“Reform first eliminates these hidden drains. The fiscal benefit appears gradually—through reduced deficit pressure, better budgeting discipline, and explicit, targeted support—not through a sudden pile of spendable “savings.”
He also explained that “Debt figures are similarly abused.”
“A significant portion of Nigeria’s recent increase in debt stock in naira terms reflects exchange-rate revaluation of existing external obligations, not fresh borrowing. When the exchange rate adjusts, the naira value of dollar-denominated debt rises automatically. Treating this accounting effect as new borrowing is a category error, not a discovery.
“Most persistently, federation-wide collections are presented as if they belong solely to the Federal Government. They do not. Revenues in a federation are shared, earmarked, netted, and statutorily allocated. Federal budget reality is determined by FGN retained revenue plus deficit financing, not by gross federation inflows aggregated for political effect.”
