By any honest measure, Nigeria has never seen the kind of money that has flowed through the federal system since 2023. Trillions upon trillions – ₦47.39 trillion in taxes, over ₦32 trillion in oil earnings, ₦12.9 trillion from customs, ₦65 trillion in new debt, and, if the Finance Minister is to be believed, ₦10.8 trillion saved every single year from subsidy removal. Add it all up and you arrive at a staggering reality: well over ₦180 trillion has passed through the hands of this government in barely two years.
And yet the people are poorer. The streets are harder. Food is further out of reach. Electricity is less affordable. Hospitals are darker. Schools are emptier. Jobs are fewer. Hope is thinner. We have somehow managed to experience prosperity at the top and poverty at the bottom – simultaneously. It is here the question stops being economic and becomes ethical, moral, political: what has this government done with the wealth of a nation? And how did historic inflows produce historic suffering?
We were told subsidy removal would save the nation. We were told it was a patriotic duty. We watched the price boards at filling stations jump overnight. We watched transport double. Then triple. We watched food prices rise like floodwaters. We watched salaries remain where they were. We watched hunger become a quiet, permanent house guest. And so, Nigerians did what they have always done – they endured. They rearranged their lives. They cut meals. They walked distances. They negotiated their dignity with hardship. They kept their side of the bargain. Government did not keep its own.
Relief did not come. Social protection came late – if it came at all. What subsidy removal truly subsidised was government revenue – not citizen welfare. It saved the spreadsheet. It strangled the citizen. And this is not reform. This is extraction wearing technocratic perfume.
For a government that boasts of record revenue, the absence of visible transformation is no longer puzzling – it is obscene. Where are the world-class public hospitals? Where are the mass transit systems easing urban suffering? Where is the nationwide broadband powering a digital economy? Where are the modernised schools? Where are the manufacturing hubs that employ? Where is the agricultural revolution that feeds? Where is the evidence that all this pain had a purpose?
Instead, Nigerians are treated to annual budget ceremonies and glossy presentations – where charts rise while living standards fall. They are asked to clap for macro-economic indicators that do not cook soup. Debt servicing swallows revenue; the cost of governance balloons; prestige projects are advertised like campaign posters. Politicians speak in PowerPoint slides. Citizens live in empty plates and dark homes. And whenever questions are asked, the response is a shrug – followed by a statistic. But governance is not an accounting trick. It is a social contract. And this government has broken it.
A reformist administration worthy of the name would publish every kobo of spending in daylight. It would strip the walls off the treasury and let sunlight in. It would take a spotlight to corruption, not sweep the dirt under imported carpets. It would cut the waste at the top before cutting the subsidy at the bottom. It would place welfare, services, jobs and public dignity at the centre of economic policy – not ribbon-cuttings, consultant contracts and choreography. But Nigeria remains trapped in a political culture where public wealth is generated collectively and distributed privately. The nation works. The elite eats. And the poor are told to tighten belts that no longer exist.
Let us be clear: if ₦180 trillion truly flowed through the national treasury and Nigerians are still poorer, then something is fundamentally wrong – not with the people, not with the market, but with the governing architecture itself. Money meant for the many is disappearing into the machinery of the few. Accountability is avoided. Transparency is postponed. Responsibility is outsourced to future speeches and committees. And so the anger in the streets is not irrational. It is not sabotage. It is not politics. It is the rational response of citizens who were promised reform but delivered hardship. People are not protesting because they hate the country. They are protesting because they love it enough to ask why it keeps being stolen from them.
This – not exchange rates, not revenue targets, not deficit charts – is the real ideological conflict before Nigeria. Either the state finally becomes a guardian of public good, or it remains a pipeline for private gain disguised as reform. Either we build a technocratic culture grounded in data, delivery and measurable outcomes, or we continue with the tragic comedy of press-release governance – where speeches are immaculate and reality is unforgiving. The age of slogans is ending. Nigerians now demand receipts.
Tell us where the trillions went. Show us the projects. Prove the benefits. Publish the audits. Track the subsidy savings. Map the loans to real outcomes. Reduce the obscene cost of governance. Stop treating national resources as political pocket change. Because the truth is stark and unavoidable: a nation cannot survive forever on pain, promises and propaganda. There comes a time when the books must balance – not just in the treasury, but in the lives of citizens.
And so people eventually ask the question this government can no longer escape: If the country has never had this much money – why has life never been this hard?
The answer, when it finally emerges, will not simply explain the past. It may well determine who deserves to govern Nigeria’s future.