Workers’ Day: Broken Promises, Shattered Hopes: The Nigerian Worker’s Burden Under the Tinubu Administration

Every first day of May, nations across the world pause to honour the dignity of labour and the men and women whose sweat and toil sustain civilisation. In Nigeria, Workers’ Day has always carried a particular poignancy, a moment to celebrate the resilience of a workforce that endures much and receives little.

But as we mark this year’s commemoration, I write not with celebration in my heart, but with grief. Grief for the Nigerian worker who was promised renewed hope and received instead renewed hardship.

“Renewed Hope” –  those two words carried the dreams of millions of Nigerians who trooped to the polls in 2023. They were words that promised a departure from the suffering of previous years; a promise that the government would finally work for the people. Today, as we assess nearly three years of the Tinubu administration, it is painfully clear that what was renewed was not hope, but hardship. What was refreshed was not the fortunes of the Nigerian people, but the pockets of those in power.

The Nigerian worker –  the teacher, the nurse, the factory hand, the civil servant, the artisan, has been the primary victim of an administration that, by all observable evidence, is far more interested in increasing the revenue at its disposal than in improving the lives of the citizens it governs.

The fuel subsidy removal was a necessary step, recklessly executed.

Let me be clear: the removal of the fuel subsidy was, in principle, a policy that many, including myself, had long advocated. The subsidy had become a fiscal haemorrhage that enriched cabal middlemen while denying the government of the resources needed for development. Its removal was necessary and overdue.

But the manner in which the Tinubu administration executed this policy was irresponsible and callous. On the day of inauguration, with no preparation, no safety nets, no cushioning mechanisms, and no transition plan for ordinary Nigerians, the President announced the end of the subsidy. The price of fuel skyrocketed. Transportation costs doubled and tripled overnight. The cost of food and basic goods hit the roof. The Nigerian worker, who was already struggling to survive on a salary eroded by years of inflation, was suddenly confronted with a cost of living that made mere survival feel like a luxury.

A responsible government would have spent the preceding months preparing Nigerians for this transition, establishing social safety nets, empowering the most vulnerable, and ensuring that the pain of reform was shared equitably. This administration did none of that. It simply removed the subsidy and left the Nigerian worker to drown.

Trillions were ostensibly saved, but nothing gained by the people. The fuel subsidy removal freed up enormous sums of money. Billions of dollars that had previously been committed to keeping pump prices artificially low were suddenly available. Nigerians, who had suffered the immediate consequences of the removal, were right to ask: Where has this saved money gone? What has been done with it to improve their lives?

The answer is deeply troubling. Rather than being channelled into programmes that would directly benefit Nigerians, infrastructure that serves the people, healthcare, education, or an economic stimulus, these funds have been shared among the various tiers of government. The bulk of the federal government’s share, disturbingly, appears to be financing the controversial $11 billion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project. As desirable as this project was, it was not subjected to competitive bidding or due process. It was awarded to a company owned by a man that President Tinubu himself has publicly acknowledged as his business partner. This is not governance, it is the brazen conversion of public resources for private enrichment.

While the Nigerian worker pays more to transport themselves to and fro work, more to eat, more to keep their children in school, the administration is signing off on an $11 billion contract that bypassed every safeguard of transparency and accountability that should protect the public purse.

This administration’s decision to float the nation’s currency has led to the free fall of the Naira and the ensuing erosion of purchasing power is compounding the misery of the fuel subsidy removal.

Again, exchange rate reform is a legitimate policy debate. But the manner in which it was done, abruptly, without a credible foreign exchange supply strategy, without the structural reforms needed to attract the inflows that would stabilise the currency, caused the Naira to enter a catastrophic free fall. The exchange rate, which was already under severe pressure, crashed to levels that had never before been seen in our national economic history.

For the Nigerian worker earning a salary denominated in Naira, this collapse was devastating. Whatever purchasing power had survived years of inflation was wiped out. Imported goods, including medicines, food items, and educational materials, became unaffordable. In fact some goods, especially medicines are no longer on the shelves. Businesses that relied on imported inputs shut down or drastically reduced their operations, leading to job losses. Workers who had spent decades building careers found themselves unable to provide for their families in any meaningful way.

Ironically, what has been showcased as tax reforms is indeed the taxing of the impoverished. As if the combined effects of fuel subsidy removal and naira devaluation were not punishment enough for the Nigerian worker, the Tinubu administration also set about reviewing the nation’s tax laws, with the stated purpose of extracting more revenue from the citizenry. Increasing taxes during an economic crisis, when citizens are already struggling to survive, is not fiscal responsibility. It is an act of cruelty masquerading as policy. A government that truly serves its people grows the tax base by growing the economy, by creating the conditions for businesses to thrive, for jobs to multiply, for incomes to rise. When more people are employed and earning more, tax revenues naturally increase without placing an additional burden on those who are already struggling. The Tinubu administration has chosen the opposite approach: squeeze the people harder, regardless of their capacity to pay.

Sadly, borrowing more, and delivering less has become the characteristics of the Tinubu-led APC administration.

What makes this administration’s economic record even more alarming is that, alongside all the new revenues generated, from subsidy savings, from a floating exchange rate that boosted Naira receipts on dollar-denominated revenues, and from aggressive taxation, government borrowing has also increased dramatically. Nigeria’s debt profile has worsened. And yet, for two consecutive years, the government has been unable to fully fund its own budget. Nigerians are owed a full and transparent account of where all this money has gone.

Increased revenues plus increased borrowing should translate into increased development. Instead, we see decaying infrastructure, underfunded public services, and a population sinking deeper into multidimensional poverty. The arithmetic simply does not add up, and that absence of accountability is an insult to every worker who pays taxes and every citizen and the generations unborn in whose names these loans are taken.

During the 2023 presidential campaign, I presented Nigerians with an alternative vision. Our manifesto proposed a $10 billion economic stimulus programme, a bold, people-centred intervention that would have used the savings from subsidy removal to directly transform the lives of Nigerians. This plan was designed to create millions of jobs across agriculture, manufacturing, technology, and infrastructure. It would have lifted millions out of poverty, provided targeted support to the most vulnerable, and ignited the kind of economic activity that grows the tax base organically.

A stimulus of that scale, properly implemented, would have generated far more revenue for government than any tax increase ever could, because it would have been earned from a growing, productive economy rather than extracted from an impoverished, shrinking one. It would have meant that the pain of subsidy removal was temporary, giving way to a period of genuine renewal, renewal of opportunity, of employment, of hope.

Instead, Nigerians were given a coastal highway awarded without due process to a presidential buddy. The contrast between these two visions, one centred on the people, one centred on self, could not be starker.

On this Workers’ Day, I want to speak directly to the men and women who wake up every morning and go to work in spite of everything: the civil servants who have not received their full entitlements, the traders whose goods no one can afford to buy, the factory workers whose employers are closing shop, the teachers and medical personnel holding together systems that government is failing to adequately fund. You are not invisible. Your suffering is not a statistic. It is real, it is documented, and it is a direct consequence of a trial-and-error policy choices made by those entrusted with the responsibility to serve you.

Nigeria’s working people did not cause this crisis. They did not vote for impoverishment. They voted for hope, and that hope was taken from them. They deserve leadership that spends the nation’s resources on their welfare, not on opaque mega-projects that serve the well-connected. They deserve a government that measures its success by their living standards, not by the size of its spending, the growth of its debt, or the breadth of its patronage networks.

Nigeria can and must do better. The resources exist. The talent exists. What is lacking is the will to govern for all Nigerians rather than for the few.

Nigeria can – and must – do better. The resources exist. The talents abound. What is lacking is the will to govern for all, not just for a privileged few.

On this Workers’ Day, I reaffirm my commitment to building a Nigeria where the dignity of labour is matched by its reward – where hard work pays, where honesty is protected, and where government truly serves the people.

The Nigerian worker deserves genuine renewal – not the Orwellian version. A renewal that is tangible, measurable and real. Not as a slogan. But as a lived reality.