₦airaland Forum

The greatest threat to Tinubu's re-election may not be the opposition. It may be the governors sitting beside him.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has taken consequential economic decisions: removing the fuel subsidy, reforming the foreign exchange system, and attempting to stabilise Nigeria's battered economy. Federal allocations to states have increased substantially. Yet millions of Nigerians are still waiting to feel the benefits.

The problem may not be the reforms themselves, but the failure to deliver their dividends to the grassroots.

Tinubu appears to have underestimated a fundamental truth of Nigerian governance: increased allocations do not automatically translate into development. Somewhere between Abuja and the villages, the promise of economic reform is getting lost.

THE GOVERNORS' GREAT ESCAPE

The subnational governments may be the missing link in Tinubu's economic equation.

While the President absorbs the political backlash from expensive petrol, food inflation, and declining purchasing power, state governments receive substantial monthly allocations from FAAC. Yet communities continue to struggle with bad roads, poorly equipped hospitals, collapsing schools, insecurity, and unreliable electricity.

Where is the evidence of the additional revenue?

Some governors appear more interested in political loyalty, elaborate lifestyles, and the choreography of power than in demonstrating measurable improvements in their citizens' lives. The political spectacle of singing and dancing to "Omo Ologo" means little to a family that cannot afford its next meal.

FAAC allocations are public resources, not political gifts. Where there is evidence of waste, diversion, or corruption, there must be transparent investigation and accountability.

A governor cannot perpetually blame Abuja for suffering in a state while refusing to account for the resources entrusted to his administration.

THE NORTH IS BLEEDING

The consequences are especially severe in vulnerable communities across Northern Nigeria, where poverty, insecurity, displacement, and poor public services reinforce one another.

Subsidy removal magnified the burden on households already living on the margins. Higher transportation costs pushed up the cost of food and basic necessities. Families were forced to make increasingly painful choices.

Meanwhile, what does increased government revenue mean to a child attending a school without adequate furniture or a roof? What does economic reform mean to a community whose health centre lacks essential medicines?

The contrast between elite prosperity and grassroots deprivation is becoming impossible to ignore.

The people were asked to sacrifice. They deserve to see what those sacrifices have purchased.

THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT: THE MISSING FRONT LINE

Tinubu could have made grassroots accountability the centrepiece of his administration.

Imagine a presidential monitoring team visiting every local government, documenting public projects before and after completion, verifying expenditure, and holding community meetings to establish what residents actually need.

Every road, school, clinic, and water project would have verifiable evidence of delivery. Every abandoned project would raise questions. Every allocation would face scrutiny.

This should ordinarily be part of effective local governance. But where local government chairpersons depend more on governors than on the citizens they serve, accountability becomes a casualty of political patronage.

A chairman who fears his governor more than his electorate will rarely challenge the system that keeps him in power.

The President does not need to govern every local government himself. He needs to ensure that every tier of government delivers results and that public money can be traced to public benefit.

THE POLITICAL TIME BOMB

Here lies Tinubu's greatest vulnerability: Nigerians may eventually stop judging his administration by the difficulty of its reforms and start judging it by the absence of their dividends.

Governments often mistake patience for permanent tolerance. Citizens may endure hardship when they believe improvement is coming. But when sacrifice becomes prolonged and visible results remain elusive, patience hardens into resentment.

The opposition will not need to prove that every reform was wrong. It may need only to convince voters that the benefits never reached them.

That is an exceptionally dangerous political argument.

Tinubu must confront an uncomfortable possibility: some of the failures undermining his re-election prospects may be occurring within the very political coalition expected to secure his victory.

He must demand measurable outcomes from governors, strengthen local government accountability, publish verifiable spending records, and make the impact of public expenditure visible to ordinary Nigerians.

THE FINAL WARNING

Tinubu may yet persuade Nigerians that today's pain can produce tomorrow's prosperity. But that argument becomes increasingly difficult when the people making the sacrifices cannot identify the promised dividends.

The governors may continue to celebrate. Abuja may continue to announce allocations. Political loyalists may continue to sing.

But the neglected citizen is keeping a different account: the price of food, the cost of transportation, the insecurity on the roads, the school without a roof, and the hospital without medicine.

A president can survive unpopular reforms. What is much harder to survive is the perception that the pain was national, but the benefits were reserved for the privileged.

If Tinubu fails to connect economic reform to everyday improvements in people's lives, the greatest threat to his re-election may not be the opposition.

It may be the governors who failed to deliver, the local governments that failed to function, and the millions of Nigerians who were told to endure today for a better tomorrow.

History will not ultimately judge this administration by how much money it distributed or how many policies it announced.

It will ask one question:

After all the sacrifices Nigerians were asked to make, what actually changed in their lives?

If the answer cannot be seen, touched, or experienced at the grassroots, no amount of political choreography will make that question disappear.