Tinubu’s first year in nine charts

When President Bola Tinubu assumed office a year ago, the Nigerian economy was in tatters and in search of a new growth path.

One year later, Tinubu has pushed through bold economic reforms that have delivered shock therapy for Nigerians.

The following charts summarise Tinubu’s first year in office:

Nigeria’s headline inflation under the Tinubu-led administration has spiralled to 33.70 percent in April, the highest after a year of inaugurating successive governments since 1999, BusinessDay’s findings show.

As of May 2023, when Tinubu took over as president, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that the country’s inflation rate was 22.41 percent.

Since Tinubu announced the petrol subsidy removal during his inauguration on May 29, pump prices have more than tripled, while the value of the naira has plunged following the floating of the currency, sparking an explosion of headline inflation.

Analysts project that consumer prices may not ease soon owing to low productivity in the agricultural sector, exchange rate fluctuations, and the threefold increase in electricity tariffs for Band A users, BusinessDay earlier reported.

Tajudeen Ibrahim, director of research and strategy at Chapel Hill Denham, said inflation is expected to moderate, adding that its deceleration may not sharply touch the 21 percent forecast by the country’s apex bank.

The average cost of preparing a pot of jollof rice for a Nigerian family of five also rose by 55 percent to N16,955 from N10,882 within a year, largely as a result of the naira depreciation, according to the SBM Intelligence Jollof index.

This equals 53 percent of the N30,000 minimum wage, meaning that a minimum-wage earner can only cook jollof rice once a month.

“The cost of cooking a pot of jollof rice for me and my family would have cost me about N7,000 last year, but now, even N12,000 can’t sufficiently cook the same quantity for my family. I only cook jollof rice during celebrations; other times, I use ground pepper and eggs,” Lola Adio, a mother of five children, told BusinessDay.

The report, titled ‘Crisis at the Table’, by SBM Intelligence, an Africa-focused geopolitical research and strategic communications consulting firm, said that the primary trigger for the increase was the naira depreciation, which moved from a monthly average of N460 to a dollar in May 2023 to a monthly average of over N1,400 in May 2024.

“This severely affected food affordability, particularly as the country still largely depends on food imports to meet its food demands,” the report said.

NBS data also shows that Nigerians spent N982 on a healthy diet in March, costing 95 percent more than N503 after one year of the Tinubu-led administration.

The CoHD metric assesses the availability, price, and nutritional composition of retail food items to identify the most cost-effective combination meeting the requirements for a healthy diet.

“Animal source foods were the most expensive food group recommendation to meet in March, accounting for 37 percent of the total CoHD and providing 13 percent of the total calories,” the report said.

During his inauguration speech in May 2023, President Bola Tinubu announced the removal of the petrol subsidy, which immediately spiked the prices of petrol, food items, and services. Before this, there was a difference of close to N202 for every litre of PMS imported into the country.

Data gleaned from the NBS shows that the average retail price paid by consumers for petrol in April 2024 was N701.24, a 176.02 percent increase when compared to the value recorded in April 2023, before President Tinubu’s assumption of office, which was N254.06.

BusinessDay, however, reported in February that the fuel subsidy is back in effect and is now greater than what was being paid before Tinubu’s decision to end the practice in May of last year.

Analysis revealed that the country is spending around N907.5 billion monthly on subsidies for gasoline due to a foreign exchange crisis that has pushed the actual cost per litre to N1,203.

A week before the 2023 presidential election, Mele Kyari, the group chief executive office of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), stated during the final cutover ceremony of a state-owned oil firm from a corporation to a company in Abuja that the country is spending over N400 billion monthly on petrol subsidies.

Although the government still pays subsidies, the price of gasoline has continued to increase in the past year, with only a slight decrease in September 2023 and January 2024.

Compounding the steep prices of gasoline was the fuel scarcity, which hit the country hard at the end of April.

“This equals 53 percent of the N30,000 minimum wage, meaning that a minimum-wage earner can only cook jollof rice once a month.”

Despite assurance from the NNPC that the logistics issue, which had been the cause of the scarcity, was resolved, long queues at petrol stations carried on for months. The scarcity of petrol heightened the already existing difficulties of Nigerians, as workers had to stand at bus stops for hours to get buses with exorbitant fares, and business owners had to face losses in their businesses.

Since Tinubu assumed office, BusinessDay has reported a series of petrol shortages caused by various issues.

Likewise, Nigeria’s daily average crude oil production is yet to surpass the crude oil production quota handed down to it by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).