Reforms paying off’ — Shettima says Tinubu chose economic repair over applause
Vice-President Kashim Shettima says President Bola Tinubu’s administration came in a difficult time when the country had to confront economic truths that had been postponed for too long.
Shettima spoke in Abuja on Thursday at the public presentation of ‘Shadows: Protest Essays on Africa’s Most Consequential Country (1999-2023)’ by Eniola Bello, managing director of ThisDay Newspaper.
The vice president said Nigeria’s fourth republic has “been a long conversation between hope and disappointment, between protest and patience, between the promises of power and the expectations of citizens”.
Represented by Aliyu Modibbo, special adviser to the president on general duties (office of the vice-president), the vice president noted that Nigeria has started benefiting from the difficult repairs that Tinubu embarked upon shortly after taking office in May 2023.
The removal of the petrol subsidy and the unification of the foreign exchange system were not easy decisions, and we have never pretended that they carried no pain,” he said.
“But leadership, at its most serious level, is the courage to choose repair over applause, and to do today what prevents a deeper crisis tomorrow.”
While highlighting the gains of Tinubu’s economic reforms, Shettima said Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 3.89 percent in the first quarter of 2026, after a growth of 3.4 percent in 2024 and an expansion of 4.6 percent in the fourth quarter of that year.
Oil production has rebounded to about 1.5 million barrels per day, while debt servicing has declined from 96 per cent to below 65 per cent of revenue,” he said.
“These figures do not mean that all hardship has disappeared, but they show that the economy is finding firmer ground.”
The vice president noted that over 100,000 Nigerians have accessed the national consumer credit scheme, with hundreds of thousands more in the pipeline.
“The student loan programme is opening the door of higher education to children who might otherwise have been locked out by poverty,” he said.
In infrastructure, the administration is pushing major arteries such as the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, the Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway, and the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Road, while hundreds of road projects and rural road interventions are being pursued to connect communities, markets, farms, and industries.”
Shettima also cited the N26.08 trillion capital expenditure in the 2026 budget, describing it as a “firm statement that this government is investing in the physical foundations of growth”.
“Yet figures alone do not tell the full story of a nation. That is why books like Shadows matter,” he said.
“They remind us that policy must be understood through people, that reform must be explained with honesty, and that democracy must never become a conversation among politicians alone.”
He said writers and journalists help the government “to connect statistics to suffering, policy to memory, and governance to the human condition”.
‘DEMOCRACY MUST ACCOMMODATE DISAGREEMENT’
Shettima commended Bello for the courage, the discipline, and the public spirit that have gone into producing the two-volume work.
“A nation is held together by the stories it is brave enough to tell about itself, and no democracy grows by hiding its shadows from the light,” he said.
It has often been said that leadership is a practice and not a title, and I believe the same is true of journalism and literature. They are not ornaments of society. They are practices of memory, of conscience, of correction, and of renewal.”
Speaking on the role of the media to hold the government accountable, Shettima said Tinubu has remained firm in his belief that democracy must accommodate disagreement.
Every administration has faced the judgement of history, and every generation has had to decide whether to treat criticism as hostility or as an instrument of democratic improvement,” he said.
“The media has been central to that process. When it is responsible, courageous, and fair, it does not weaken the state. It strengthens the state by compelling public officials to remember that power is held in trust.”
Shettima added that Tinubu understands, from personal experience, that the press, civil society, activists, writers, and citizens who ask hard questions belong to the architecture of a free society.
According to the vice president, a government that cannot listen will eventually lose the confidence of the people, because trust is not built by authority alone.
Shettima said trust grows when citizens feel seen, heard, valued, and protected.