Dr. Abejide Olusegun
Nigeria has stood on the precipice of desolation long enough, mocked by its own failures, harassed by corruption, whipped by insecurity, and dismissed by friends and foes alike. It was a country searching for an anchor, a country without direction. But today, the tide is turning. The Nigeria of 2025 is not the Nigeria of yesterday, and no amount of whining from self-acclaimed change-bringers will change the facts. The facts are stubborn, and the facts are on our side. The figures are bold, and the figures are shouting recovery. The results are clear, and they are spitting out a president who is forging ahead in spite of constant sabotage to create an economic renaissance.
But instead of honest admittance, what have we been served? Nothing but the venomous bile of potstickers who only prosper when Nigeria fails: Nasir El-Rufai, the Kaduna warlord, born of division and bred on hate; Rauf Aregbesola, the Yoruba son who betrayed Yoruba progress; Dino Melaye, the Nigerian jester, self-acclaimed Prince of the polity; and Peter Obi, the self-appointed ‘lord’ of bitterness. They line up daily to cast spells on Nigeria in the morning.
For them, the rising sun of Nigeria is a curse. For regular Nigerians, it is a lifeline. Tinubu’s presidency has witnessed a series of achievements that some Nigerians thought were impossible to achieve within a year. Time to set the record straight. For the first time in over a decade, Nigeria has exceeded its OPEC production quota for three consecutive months, with an average production of 1.71 million barrels per day. For a nation once blighted by sabotage and oil theft, this is no mean feat.
Second, oil theft, the monster that bled the country’s veins dry, has been reduced to below 10,000 barrels per day – the lowest it’s been in sixteen years. The cartels milking the nation’s birthright dry are running out of breath. This government deserves some credit. Third, Nigeria hit its revenue target for the whole fiscal year as early as August – the first in our nation’s history. For decades, budgets were bedtime stories and targets of fairy tales written in black ink on white documents. Tinubu has rewritten them in bold letters.
Fourth, the Nigerian Stock Exchange hit a record, with the All-Share Index closing above 130,000 points for the first time in its history. The market has spoken, and it has said loud and clear that Nigeria is ready for business. Fifth, MTN Nigeria, the telecommunications company, hit a record ₦10 trillion valuation, becoming the first Nigerian company to reach that height. That is the kind of corporate muscle that only a stable and promising economy can give a company.
Sixth, food inflation, the scourge of the poor, has started to come down. Prices are falling. In August 2025, the inflation rate in Nigeria fell to 20.12% from 21.88% in July, marking a 1.76% decline. It is not poetic, but to mothers in the market and fathers stretching a salary, it is hope.
Seventh, the fuel price has crashed to ₦841 per liter as the Dangote refinery came on stream. Nigerians have groaned and complained for years that the nation imports refined fuel from foreign countries. Today, domestic refining is a reality. Prices are coming down. Eighth, the naira has appreciated to ₦1,497 to the dollar, its best in five months. This is not a fluke. This is the result of fiscal discipline and market confidence.
Ninth, our foreign reserves have been boosted and now hover above $41 billion. And tenth, Nigeria’s trade surplus has also continued its uptrend. In 2024, Nigeria had its best-ever year for trade surpluses. For Q2 2025, the trade surplus reached ₦7.46 trillion, a 44.3% increase over the ₦5.17 trillion recorded in Q1 2025. Nigeria is selling more than it is buying—an economy that is finding its balance.
This is the Nigeria the enemies of progress do not want you to see. This is the reality Peter Obi is refusing to admit. This is why Dino Melaye has started cracking his tired jokes again. This is why El-Rufai walks around with a frown on his face. This is why Aregbesola keeps gnawing at shadows in the corner. It threatens their relevance. It punctures their narratives. Their survival depends on creating the belief in the minds of Nigerians that failure is permanent. But failure is not permanent. Tinubu is showing Nigerians otherwise.
What exactly do El-Rufai, Aregbesola, Melaye, and Obi want Nigerians to believe? Are all these things we are seeing not real? Has the OPEC quota been overshot? Those billions in reserves are a mirage? Have fuel prices not come down? That the naira has not strengthened? Hasn’t food inflation started coming down? Their denial is not born out of ignorance; it is born out of malice.
El-Rufai can never come to terms with Tinubu’s success because his own northern political ambition was cut short at the block. He ruled Kaduna like a medieval monarch with an iron fist dipped in blood and hate. His legacy is in blood. Now he gnashes his teeth at the thought that Tinubu has done what he was unable to do: create genuine, lasting coalitions across Nigeria.
Aregbesola is another walking symbol of the Yoruba betrayal of old. The same poison that destroyed Awolowo, Ige, and Abiola in their prime. A son of the soil, he now seeks crumbs in the opposition, attacking the man who gave him relevance in the first place. Dino Melaye only prospers when Nigeria is a laughing stock. He only dances when we are singing sad songs. He entertains; he does not lead. He is the proverbial jester, not a king. For such a man, a working Nigeria is bad for business.
Peter Obi is perhaps the most pitiable of them all. His entire brand is built on grievance. He cannot win without bitterness. He cannot function without constantly telling Nigerians that the sky is about to fall. Because good things in the Tinubu government will not let him be happy, his own record as governor of Anambra State revealed zero miracles, zero transformations, zero benchmarks of excellence. He now runs around with the cross of perpetual defeat on his shoulders, and the Nigerian economy coming out of recession is showing him up.
What President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has done in less than 3 years of his tenure is not perfect to them, but it is solid momentum for us. He did not get a perfect country, a perfect economy, or a perfect setup. He inherited an economy on the verge of collapse, a security structure on its knees, and a citizenry tired of promises and projections. But he started digging, and slowly, Nigeria is rising. The stock exchange is hitting records. The naira is holding ground. Oil is flowing. Food inflation is declining. Fuel is cheaper. Trade surpluses are rising.
This is nation-building. It is not instant utopia. It is not paradise on earth with perfect scores across every board. It is incremental, slow, hard-won progress. And this is what the enemies of Nigeria fear the most. They do not want Nigerians to see that the country can work, that it can perform, that it can be different. They want hopelessness to be the only story. They want Bitterness to be the national anthem.
The time has come for patriots to seize the narrative. Effective rebranding does not have to be about propaganda. It is about projection. It is about deliberately highlighting the real, positive things happening on the ground in the economy. It is time to start branding Nigeria for what it is actually becoming. Nigeria has been so well-branded over the decades as a country of corruption, chaos, and collapse. It is time to brand it now for what it is actually becoming: a nation of resilience, reform, and recovery.
To do otherwise is to hand the airwaves over to the cynics, the destructors, the perpetual mortifiers of the Nigerian dream: the likes of Obi, Melaye, El-Rufai, and Aregbesola. Patriots must start telling the truth: the economy is turning around. Security is getting better. And Nigeria is on the road out of the hole we were thrown into.
The Yoruba proverb says, “Bi o ba pe, Ogun odun, ojo kan ni.” If we count twenty years, it is still one day when history finally gives its verdict. We have spent decades counting. We have filled ledgers with years of failure. Today, history is beginning to count seasons of recovery. Bola Ahmed Tinubu has started something real, something important, something that can be measured.
The question now is whether Nigerians will allow these bitter men to deceive them or whether they will grab hold of the truth for themselves and join in the rebuilding. The enemies of progress will continue their lamentation. They have always lamented. Their bitterness has always been a personal comfort zone. But no more. Their bitterness has no audience in the face of this evidence. Nigeria is rising, and that is the greatest miracle of all.
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