Opinion

Rise of right-wing economic populism in Nigeria – Farooq Kperogi

Published

2 years ago

March 9, 2024

Rise of right-wing economic populism in Nigeria – Farooq Kperogi

Over the last few months, I have unconsciously transitioned from keyboard diarrhea to mental constipation and have pulled back from social media engagements. I even struggle to write my weekly columns.

It’s precisely because toxic, unthinking, IMF-manufactured, right-wing economic populism has become hegemonic and taken firm roots in Nigeria. Blaming Tinubu for his right-wing economic policies while ignoring the fact that his opponents subscribe to the same policies is the kind of hypocrisy my mental, emotional, or ideological constitution is incapable of tolerating.

Right-wing or conservative economic populism manifests differently in different countries, but its core lies in weaponizing the general population’s concerns and frustrations, particularly around economic issues, to advocate poisonous, anti-people, market-centric, neoliberal economic policies while blaming an invisible elite or establishment class that supposedly controls power and resources to the detriment of the majority.

In Nigeria, conservative economic populism consists of the intentionally deceitful and absurd but nonetheless successful (at least for now) demonization of subsidies, especially petrol subsidies.

Nigeria’s elite-created economic woes are fraudulently attributed to the dispensation of subsidies. The masses of unsuspecting chumps in the country are then whipped into a senseless frenzy about an invisible, unidentified class of “subsidy thieves” who putatively suck up our commonwealth through petrol subsidies and who would wither and perish when subsidies are removed.

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That’s classic right-wing economic populism. Well, experience is showing that it’s actually the masses that are withering and perishing after petrol subsidies have been removed. An acquittance who passionately opposed my recommendation to Tinubu to not remove petrol subsidies in my April 29, 2023, column by regurgitating the banal talking points of hard-hearted neoliberal hawks reached out to me a few days ago to admit that he was a gormless fool to believe the propaganda that petrol subsidies didn’t benefit the masses.

It took the collapse of his small transportation business and the descent of his previously thriving relatives into the dark depths of despair and poverty in less than one year after the removal of petrol subsidies for him to come to the realization that citizens of every country need subsidies.

Another central plank of Nigerian right-wing economic populism is the advocacy for the devaluation of the naira. It’s also known by the fancy name of “floating the naira.” The idea that the naira is “over-valued” and should be allowed to find its true worth in the crucible of demand and supply is a standard arsenal in the rhetorical armory of conservative economic populists in Nigeria.

Yet another favorite shtick of the treacherous tribe of neoliberal vampires in Nigeria is to capitalize on the well-known inefficiency of civil service bureaucracies to advocate the privatization of everything and the mass retrenchment of workers.

Yet these are really old, discredited Structural Adjustment Program policies that the IMF and the World Bank imposed on developing countries, which devastated national economies, caused the untimely deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, which the IMF was compelled to slyly apologize for amid mounting evidence of their tragic failure.

The same rotten and venomous policies have been repackaged, aromatized, and re-presented to developing countries as new and effective elixirs. Every developing country that has embraced them is now coping with potentially explosive internal turmoil.

Like Nigeria, Egypt recently accepted to devalue its currency by more than 68 percent and remove subsidies that lighten the burden of existence for ordinary folks in exchange for an $8 billion loan from the IMF.

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Everyone within striking distance of becoming president in Nigeria in 2023 subscribed—and still subscribes—to the consensus that the IMF and the World Bank are inviolable economic oracles that must not be disobeyed, that subsidies must be eliminated and the poor be left to fend for themselves, and that the market is supreme and should be left to determine the value of everything.

In fact, the other day, PDP presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar put out a press statement titled “Argentina’s Javier Milei approach to reforms should serve as a lesson for Tinubu” where he extolled the dangerously right-wing Argentinian president Javier Milei whose rightwing economic populist policies are destroying the fabric of his country.

“I read a recent report in Reuters titled: ‘Argentina’s market double down on Milei as investors ‘start to believe’,” he wrote.

Well, the same Western financial establishment is already praising the outcome of Tinubu’s economic policies. A March 8, 2024, report from Bloomberg, for instance, has said that “Foreign investor demand for Nigerian assets surges as reforms instituted by President Bola Tinubu’s administration starts paying off.”

Similarly, one David Roberts, identified as a former British Council Director in Abuja, bragged the other day that Nigeria’s economy “posted a GDP growth of 3.46% in quarter 4” as a result of Tinubu’s economic reforms.

He wrote: “Why would a country with a severe infrastructural deficit invest more money on a wasteful expenditure such as cheap petrol, instead of building schools, hospitals, dams and a national railway system? It is evident that it had to go.

“We joined the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in saying as much to the Nigerian government. And at long last, it is gone.”

People outside Nigeria reading about Nigeria in the Western financial press would think Nigerians are now living in El- Dorado as a result of Tinubu’s “reforms”—just like Atiku thinks a favorable Reuters story about the anti-people economic policies of Milei, who is called the “Madman of Argentina,” is already yielding excellent outcomes.

If you do the bidding of the Western establishment, they will always make up statistics to show that your economy has grown. I called attention to this in my June 28, 2023, column titled, “Why Tinubu’s Hiring and Firing Frenzy Excites Nigerians.”

I wrote: “What shall it profit a country when it pursues policies that cause the economy to ‘grow’ but cause the people to growl? After the economy has ‘grown’ but the people still groan, where is the growth? The most important growth isn’t the rise in abstract, disembodied, World Bank/IMF-created metrics but in the improvement of the quality of life of everyday folks.”

Milei’s Argentina that Atiku is praising is almost in the same right-wing economic hellscape as Nigeria is. Like Tinubu, Milei began his presidency by removing subsidies for petrol and transportation and devaluing the Argentinian peso by more than 50 percent. In addition, he threw scores of workers into unemployment when he reduced the number of ministries in the country.

He is so market-centric he scrapped a whole host of rules designed to reign in the greed and exploitation of private enterprises. He did this by getting the parliament to approve the principle of “delegated powers” to the executive for one year, which allows him to rule by decree like a military dictator in the name of “economic urgency.”

The result? Like in Nigeria, most Argentinians are having a hard time finding food to eat. A February 1, 2024, CNN story captures it: “‘I don’t know how I will eat.’ For the workers behind Argentina’s national drink, Milei’s reforms are turning sour.”

Argentinian workers periodically go on strike to protest Milei’s punishing right-wing policies. On February 28, all flights were cancelled in the country because air travel workers went on a crippling 24-hour strike.

A March 4, 2024, Bloomberg report said Milei’s policies had caused spending to plunge at shops in Argentina, that firms were seeing double-digit sales declines for third straight month, that the worth of salaries had plummeted amid a paralyzing 250% inflation, and that recession was deepening in the country.

The lead to the story says it all: “Consumers in Argentine are running out of options to shield themselves from runaway price increases as President Javier Milei’s austerity measures send the country deeper into recession.”

That’s Atiku’s exemplar for Nigeria. Peter Obi is, of course, no different. Tinubu, Atiku, Obi, and in fact Yemi Osinbajo are united in their love for rightwing economics, which invariably leads to an increase in poverty, suffocation of workers, rolling back of welfare for common people, etc.

In a perverse way, they are actually worse than Buhari because they are self-conscious conservative economic ideologues. Buhari is merely a know-nothing, bungling, kakistocratic power monger.

The real tragedy is that the vast majority of Nigerians who are ensconced in the narrow ethno-religious political silos built around the personalities of the major 2023 presidential candidates don’t realize that on economic policies, which is what really matters, Tinubu, Atiku, Obi, and Osinbajo are more alike than unlike.

Sadly, Nigerian leftists, who used to be the bulwark against the dangers of conservative economic totalitarianism, have either been coopted or silenced. Only Femi Falana, Majeed Dahiru, I, and a few others consistently stand up to the forces of economic conservatism.

This state of affairs will ensure that Tinubu’s successor will be another neoliberal ideologue who will bludgeon his way to the presidency using religion and ethnicity as cudgels. When he deepens the misery he inherits, he will blame his predecessor for not being a faithful practitioner of the neoliberal gospel. His own successor will replicate his template.

After three terms of this right-wing baloney, Nigeria will be irretrievably gone. The time to pivot from the IMF and the World Bank and to reject everyone who is their poodle is now.

Farooq Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian newspaper columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism.

Rise of right-wing economic populism in Nigeria – Farooq Kperogi

Opinion

Tinubu’s new tax regime as sovereignty for sale, By Farooq Kperogi

Published

4 days ago

December 13, 2025

Trends Admin

Farooq Kperogi

Tinubu’s new tax regime as sovereignty for sale, By Farooq Kperogi

For weeks, I deliberately avoided commenting on the sweeping new tax regime the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration plans to roll out next year. It’s not because I did not recognize its gravity, but because I am not an economist and did not want to wade into a technically dense debate armed only with moral outrage.

Silence, in this case, felt like intellectual humility. Two developments, however, forced my hand.

The first was the unexpected melodrama that erupted in northern Nigerian social media circles over the federal government’s choice of influencers to “explain” the new tax policies to Nigerians. When a list circulated showing that most of the recruited social media advocates were from the South, northern influencers cried marginalization.

The grievance was loud enough that government handlers scrambled to recruit northern voices to restore regional balance. That this was the most animated public conversation around a punishing tax regime already tells us something disquieting about our political culture.

The second trigger was a widely shared Instagram video posted on October 18, 2025, by The Rohrs Team, a US-based financial education outfit. The video framed Africa’s current wave of tax reforms as a form of “debt colonialism.”

It argues that international institutions and Western governments have perfected a system in which African states are encouraged to accumulate debt and then trained to squeeze their own poor, struggling populations to service that debt. Watching the video, I found myself simultaneously nodding in recognition and wincing at its exaggerations.

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The video’s core claims are straightforward. It alleges that United Nations-linked initiatives such as Tax Inspectors Without Borders embed Western forensic tax experts in African countries to help governments close tax loopholes, audit businesses, and boost revenue.

It then argues that these efforts are not neutral capacity-building exercises, but part of an expansive IMF and World Bank-driven system designed to ensure that African countries generate enough revenue to repay foreign loans.

According to the video, this system relies on carrot-and-stick tactics: cooperate with external tax advisers and access more loans, resist and face isolation or penalties. The end result, it concludes, is a more efficient and less visible form of colonial extraction.

My check from multiple sources shows that some of this is wrong. Some of it is imprecise. Some of it is uncomfortably true.

It is false that UN or OECD officials directly impose tax laws, prosecute businesses, or collect money on behalf of Western creditors. Tax Inspectors Without Borders does not write tax legislation and does not wield enforcement powers. Those functions remain with national governments.

Claims that Tunisia’s tax-to-GDP ratio increased by over 50 percent because of UN tax collectors are also demonstrably overstated.

But dismissing the entire argument as conspiracy would be intellectually lazy.

What is undeniably true is that Nigeria, like many developing countries, is operating under intense fiscal pressure shaped by external actors. The IMF has for years emphasized “domestic resource mobilization” as a central plank of economic reform.

That’s just a fancy term for raising more taxes. Nigeria’s chronically low tax-to-GDP ratio is routinely cited as a pathology that must be cured. Debt sustainability analyses, credit ratings, access to concessional financing, and investor confidence all hinge on this logic.

In that sense, no one needs to issue direct orders. The structure does the coercion. If this sounds abstract, Kenya offers a concrete, sobering example.

In 2024, the Kenyan government introduced a sweeping finance bill that raised taxes across multiple sectors, including fuel, basic goods, and digital services. The bill was explicitly linked to Kenya’s IMF program and the need to so-called plug fiscal gaps.

The result was one of the most dramatic popular uprisings the country has seen in decades. Protesters poured into the streets, security forces responded brutally, and lives were lost. Faced with mounting unrest, the government withdrew the bill.

The story did not end there. The IMF openly acknowledged that the withdrawal created a financing shortfall. The question immediately became how Kenya would replace the lost revenue, whether through spending cuts, alternative taxes, or future legislation.

In other words, the policy instrument changed, but the fiscal imperative remained intact. That is how structural coercion works. The state may retreat tactically, but the economic logic reasserts itself.

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Nigeria’s impending tax regime fits neatly into this global pattern. The government presents it as modernization, efficiency and fairness. But its timing and content are inseparable from the overarching debt-fueled economic restructuring that has already produced fuel subsidy removal, currency devaluation, and a cost-of-living crisis of historic proportions.

The same external logic that declared petrol subsidies fiscally irresponsible now applauds aggressive tax expansion as prudent governance.

This is where the Instagram video, for all its rhetorical excess, gets something fundamentally right: sovereignty, as currently practiced, is largely a scam.

Nigeria may have a flag, an anthem and an elected government, but its macroeconomic choices are tightly circumscribed by external expectations. The petrol price regime that has tripled transportation and food costs did not emerge from a grassroots Nigerian consensus. It was the predictable outcome of long-standing IMF orthodoxy about subsidies.

The new tax regime, coming on the heels of that shock, follows the same script. Nigerians are being asked to pay more, endure more and sacrifice more in the name of fiscal responsibility defined elsewhere.

The economic consequences are not difficult to anticipate. Higher consumption taxes and compliance costs in an economy already hollowed out by inflation will depress demand, push more businesses into informality and further erode purchasing power.

Small traders, transport workers and salaried employees will feel the squeeze long before multinational corporations do. In a country where real wages have collapsed and unemployment remains structurally high, this is punishment.

And yet, there is an irony here worth lingering on. For the first time in decades, a significant number of Nigerians may begin to feel, viscerally, that the state is funded by their money. Oil rents long insulated the Nigerian government from its citizens. Taxes were an afterthought, easily evaded and politically inconsequential.

A regime that aggressively extracts revenue from ordinary people risks provoking resentment, but it also risks awakening accountability.

When people know that their tax naira pays for governance, the psychological contract changes. Suddenly, waste is personal. Corruption is theft from one’s pocket. Incompetence becomes intolerable.

The old revolutionary slogan “taxation without representation” was not just about money. It was about dignity and political agency. It was about the right to demand explanations from those who govern.

Nigeria’s new tax regime, harsh as it is, might inadvertently inaugurate a new era of critical democratic citizenship. Citizens who feel economically assaulted may also feel politically entitled. They may begin to ask harder questions, organize more assertively and reject the culture of elite impunity that oil wealth sustained for so long.

This brings me back to the farce of social media influencers scrambling for government patronage.

There is something profoundly grotesque about watching influencers fight over who gets to propagandize for a policy that will make life harder for most Nigerians. It is even more grotesque when this scramble is framed as a regional inclusion debate rather than a substantive policy argument.

The Tinubu administration recruits influencers not to so much to educate citizens as to anesthetize them. Explanation, in this context, is a euphemism for persuasion, and persuasion shades quickly into rhetorical intimidation.

I fully expect that the newly hired influencer battalions will soon swing into action, defending the indefensible, smearing critics, and blurring the line between advocacy and libel.

If recent experience is any guide, I may well become one of their earliest practice targets for having the audacity to point out that a tax regime can be both externally inspired and domestically harmful. Well, I am already used to that.

Nigeria deserves a conversation that goes beyond technocratic jargon and influencer theatrics. It deserves an honest reckoning with the reality that its economic sovereignty is constrained, its people are bearing disproportionate costs and its leaders are more accountable to international creditors than to the citizens they tax.

If this new tax regime teaches Nigerians anything, I hope it is that when the state reaches deep into your pocket, you earn the moral right to reach just as deeply into its conscience.

Tinubu’s new tax regime as sovereignty for sale, By Farooq Kperogi

Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism.

Opinion

Disaster Looms: Otedola Bridge Must Be Demolished and Rebuilt Immediately — Expert

Published

6 days ago

December 11, 2025

Trends Admin

Otedola Bridge

Disaster Looms: Otedola Bridge Must Be Demolished and Rebuilt Immediately — Expert

A project management expert and scholar, Dr. ‘Jubreel Odukoya, has urged the Lagos State Government to take immediate action to demolish and reconstruct the Otedola Bridge, warning that it is “a structural death trap” and “a man-made disaster zone” that continues to claim innocent lives.

Dr. Odukoya, a Nigerian-born construction performance researcher trained in Malaysia, condemned the government’s inaction over the recurring tragedies on the bridge, stressing that no amount of condolence messages can replace urgent technical and ethical intervention.

“The Otedola Bridge is badly designed and poorly constructed. It fails all known standards of performance, safety, and engineering ethics. The time has come for the government to stop patching and start acting. The bridge must be completely demolished and rebuilt to meet global standards of road safety and structural integrity,” he advised.

Located along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway at the boundary between Lagos and Ogun States, the Otedola Bridge has a notorious history of accidents, tanker explosions, and mass fatalities. In June 2018, a fuel tanker explosion destroyed more than fifty vehicles, claiming numerous lives. In March 2024, a newlywed couple — Chiedozie Okoye of Zenith Bank and his America-based nurse wife, Joan Chidalu — died in another crash at the same location.

Dr. Odukoya explained that these recurring disasters are not coincidental but symptomatic of structural negligence, flawed design geometry, and inadequate traffic engineering.

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“The tragedies on Otedola Bridge are predictable outcomes of engineering failure. Sharp slopes, poor drainage, absence of crash barriers, and unclear lane demarcation make it extremely difficult for heavy-duty vehicles to navigate safely. When combined with weak supervision, poor materials, and disregard for ethical project practices, disaster becomes inevitable.”

Drawing on over 33 years of experience in project management, construction oversight, and quality control, including his tenure as Director of Projects Development at Kercon Construction Limited, Lagos, Dr. Odukoya stressed that government responses must go beyond temporary repairs and ceremonial site visits.

“In Malaysia, a bridge with repeated failures would never remain open to the public. It would be closed, reassessed, and reconstructed according to stringent design and soil stability protocols,” he said.

Dr. Odukoya, a member of the Malaysian Institute of Management (MIM) and the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG), called for the urgent establishment of a Technical Audit and Reconstruction Task Force to assess Otedola Bridge and other hazardous road infrastructures across Lagos State.

“Until we subject these critical infrastructures to independent performance audits, the bloodletting will continue. Lagos cannot keep burying citizens because of man-made negligence. The government must act. Otedola Bridge must be demolished and rebuilt now.”

He appealed to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s administration to demonstrate leadership by adopting international engineering safety standards and engaging certified professionals to redesign the bridge into a model of sustainable urban infrastructure.

“This is not about blame; it is about saving lives. Lagosians deserve roads that are safe, reliable, and built to last,” Dr. Odukoya concluded.

Disaster Looms: Otedola Bridge Must Be Demolished and Rebuilt Immediately — Expert

Opinion

A troubling message from Guinea-Bissau, by Azu Ishiekwene

Published

2 weeks ago

December 5, 2025

Trends Admin

Azubuike Ishiekwene

A troubling message from Guinea-Bissau, by Azu Ishiekwene

None of the three Guineas is thriving, but in Guinea-Bissau, the country that sits on Africa’s map like a tongue of fire, recent events are twisting that nation’s fate into profound misery.

Guinea Conakry is in the grip of a military dictatorship with a messianic complex, while Equatorial Guinea is led by an authoritarian civilian government that has lost its way.

Now, Guinea-Bissau, the country that gave the world Amilcar Cabral, one of Africa’s most foresighted revolutionaries, has added manufactured military coups to its long list of notoriety, which includes being one of the continent’s most deadly drug routes.

Making a coup

On November 26, a military regime led by General Horta Inta-A deposed the elected government of President Umaro Sissoco Embalo. It moved to consolidate its grip on power by appointing Finance Minister Illidio Viera Te as the country’s new prime minister. However, not many who have been following events in the small West African country (with a population of two million) would be impressed by the whitewash.

The deposed government of Embalo was obviously being clever by half by fomenting a palace coup ahead of the announcement of the election results, which might not have favoured him. Embalo has fallen the way he rose. In 2020, he literally defied the electoral commission after the elections and announced himself president from a hotel in the country’s capital, Bissau.

After two successful military coups, over half a dozen failed ones, and intermittent power struggles between the military, politicians, and drug barons who have made Guinea-Bissau a key corridor to Latin America and Europe, citizens in that country, one of the world’s poorest, were ready to give Embalo a try.

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He started well, under the rallying cry of “Embaloism,” which was supposed to rid the country of corruption, poor governance and instil discipline. He also attempted to rebuild confidence with regional allies and powerhouses, including Nigeria, and subsequently reached out to Portugal and the IMF to repair the country’s badly damaged economy.

From Embaloism to Embalomylitis

However, it didn’t take long before Embaloism gave way to Embalomylitis, a condition that has left citizens poorer and poorer, eventually ranking 177th out of 191 on theUN Human Development Index.

Embalo prioritised conspicuous consumption. According to a DW report quoted by opposition figures, the deposed president made over 300 trips abroad in five years, accumulating more than 200 flights on a private jet for non-state visits.

This was a time when schools were failing, and roads and hospitals were in disrepair. Two years ago, his finance minister and treasury secretary were also accused of withdrawing $10 million of state funds, which was paid into 11 private companies linked to a pro-government coalition. Yet, Emabloism was supposed to fight corruption.

To cover his tracks and maintain his hold on power, Embalo went the extra mile to look after the military, often using diverted resources, which primarily came in the form of foreign aid and donor funds, to keep soldiers happy.

The crunch

Matters came to a head last year when Embalo’s government shifted the elections, which were initially scheduled in November, ahead of February 2025, when his constitutional five-year first term limit was due to expire.

One year after the initial election date, and 10 months after his first term expired, Embalo finally organised an election last month, but lacked the courage to wait for the results before he instigated a coup led by two of his key allies – a General and a politician who were both members of his kitchen cabinet.

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In one of the most dramatic military take-overs, the fallen president was speaking to the press as troops were announcing his removal, and hours later, he was safely in Dakar, Senegal, which had been like his second home. The demand of the leader of the opposition, Domingos Simoes Pereira, and the ECOWAS election monitors, led by Nigeria’s former President Goodluck Jonathan, for the full results to be released, has so far been ignored.

Dancing on Cabral’s grave

Cabral would hardly recognise Guinea-Bissau as the Portuguese colony he fought so bravely for, and for which he left a legacy that significantly influenced the independence struggles of liberation groups such as the ANC, FRELIMO, SWAPO and MPLA. In his book, Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories, he extolled the virtues of honesty and accountability. Internal forces that couldn’t stand his courage and independence, instigated from outside, killed him on the eve of that country’s independence.

Yet, five decades later, the more things appear to have changed, the more they look the same. Across the continent today, from Bissau to Conakry and Malabo, and from Niamey to Ouagadougou and Bamako, Africa is experiencing an upsurge in military regimes, all claiming a lack of honesty and accountability for striking. Yet, none of the usurpers is showing any different habits from the politicians they overthrew.

If you add the military coups in Sudan, Gabon, and Chad to the list, and exclude the numerous other failed attempts, the picture begins to resemble a throwback to Africa of the 1980s and early 1990s.

The democratic space, even in once politically stable havens such as Côte d’Ivoire and Tanzania, is shrinking, and successful transitions after elections are becoming the exception rather than the rule. In Cameroon, 92-year-old President Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982, contested and won reelection, despite being unaware that he was on the ballot, let alone that he had been reelected for the eighth time.

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Another Africa

In another life, some of the continent’s strong leaders, such as Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, Senegal’s Abdou Douf, Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings or South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, would have weighed in, as Obasanjo did in Sao Tome and Principe in 2003, to call the soldiers to order.

But it’s different today. Not only is the continent buffeted and weakened by severe economic, security, and political challenges, poor governance has also worsened the situation. The West African regional group, ECOWAS, which would have been the first line of defence in Guinea-Bissau, is fractured, sundered by the new alliance of three delinquent Sahelian states – Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.

Africa cannot help itself, nor can it rely on traditional Western allies, especially in Europe. France, for example, has fallen out of favour in several Francophone countries, while the US, under President Donald Trump, is setting the worst example of chaos-based leadership.

On your own

Guinea-Bissau can only expect messages of condemnation and threats of isolation from ECOWAS, the AU, and the UN. Such messages hold no weight for Embalo and his cohorts. They have heard similar rhetoric many times before without consequence.

The risk in Guinea-Bissau is unlikely to prompt Portugal, the country’s former colonial power, or interest the world’s resource vultures or its warmongers, such as China and Russia. Bissau-Guineans are on their own. The world would hardly notice until the tornado of military coups makes landfall in another African country, which, sadly, may be sooner than later.