President Tinubu Not Using Jazz But Performance
By Bamidele Atoyebi
Last week, Mr Dele Momodu admitted that he does not know why various Governors elected on different political party platforms are gravitating to the All Progressives Congress and President Bola Tinubu, and attributed the situation to mystical powers colloquially known in Nigeria as ‘Jazz’.
Then today, Sunday, March 1, 2026, he released a statement accusing the President of “abysmal failures in all ramifications.”
Well, let us consider Mr Momodu’s statement factually. Is President Tinubu using Juju to win over his political opponents? And has he performed poorly on the economy and in security?
On the economy, in just two years, President Tinubu added $67 billion to Nigeria’s GDP, moving us from a ₦269.29 trillion economy on May 29, 2023, when he became President, to ₦372.8 trillion today.
Furthermore, Nigeria’s balance of trade has been in surplus every quarter since President Bola Tinubu took office.
In 2020, Nigeria had a trade DEFICIT of ₦7.375 trillion, or $18.9 billion.
In 2021, Nigeria had a trade DEFICIT of N1.94 trillion, or $6.49 billion.
But since President Bola Tinubu assumed office on May 29, 2023, Nigeria has not experienced even one quarter of a trade deficit, and Nigeria has experienced ten consecutive quarters of trade SURPLUSES, including:
N1.3 trillion in Q3 2023
N3.6 trillion in Q4 2023
N4.4 trillion in Q1 2024
N3.7 trillion in Q2 2024
N5.3 trillion in Q3 2024
N3.4 trillion in Q4 2024
N5.2 trillion in Q1 2025
N7.5 trillion in Q2 2025
N6.7 trillion in Q3 2025
And in the first nine months of 2025, Nigeria recorded a trade surplus of $10.83 billion, with exports of $44.06 billion outpacing imports of $33.23 billion.
Additionally, our GDP has grown every quarter and year that President Tinubu has been in office, with a 3.40% increase in 2024 and 3.87% in 2025.
Meanwhile, both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have projected a 4.4% GDP growth rate for Nigeria in 2026.
Under Tinubu, our economy is growing faster than our population, a departure from the pre-Tinubu era.
Also, due to the Tinubu administration’s policies, all Nigerian states are receiving at least 200% more federal allocation than they were previously receiving.
For example, you, Dele Momodu, are from Edo State. In 2022, Edo State received only ₦87.50 billion from the federation account. However, in the first eight months of 2025 alone, Edo State received ₦176.63 billion from the federation account.
It is this strong economic performance, rather than Jazz, that has led almost all of Nigeria’s 36 governors to align with President Tinubu.
Moreover, under Tinubu, according to the World Bank. Nigeria now has the second-largest manufacturing base in Africa. Only Egypt, with a manufacturing capacity of $59.6 billion, is above Nigeria’s with $55.7 billion.
It is therefore no surprise that we have moved from being the top petrol importer in Africa in 2023 to being the number one fuel exporter in West Africa in 2026.
As a result of the above, the IMF listed Nigeria as the sixth-largest contributor to global GDP growth in 2025, a fact celebrated by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man.
Our citizens no longer experience fuel queues, and in 2025 alone, the price of petrol reduced more than three times. This is unprecedented in the history of our nation.
And the reduction in fuel prices has positively affected our inflation rate. In May 2023, Nigeria’s headline inflation rate was 22.41%. As of today, our food inflation rate is in single digits at 8.89%. Shockingly, your ADC colleague, Peter Obi, is now complaining that food prices are too low! Perhaps he wants Nigerians to suffer so he can offer them Hero beer!
People like Mr Dele Momodu (though not him specifically) mocked the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway as not feasible. Today, that road is gradually becoming a reality, reducing a 2-hour journey to a mere 15 minutes! And the Sokoto-Illela-Badagry Superhighway is progressing geometrically!
This is even as the total market capitalisation of the Nigerian Stock Exchange stood at ₦27.915 trillion on December 30, 2022. Today, it is ₦122 trillion. Almost five times what it was before President Tinubu was elected.
And our foreign reserves have surged to a 13-year high of $50.45 billion as of the end of February 2026, powered by the fact that we are exporting more than we are importing.
So, how is it possible that with all of the above economic exploits, you, Dele Momodu, a supposed intellectual, claim that President Tinubu is an ‘abysmal failure’ on the economy?
Even you, Dele Momodu, look fatter, fresher, robuster, and more rotund today than you did before President Tinubu assumed office.
Regarding security, which you, Mr Momodu, also raised, let me cast my mind back to the state of Nigeria under the last administration.
In 2016, the Niger Delta Militancy that had been resolved by President Umar Musa Yar’adua’s amnesty programme had resurfaced, and multiple groups were turning the region into a war zone.
One of those groups, the Niger Delta Avengers, had crippled Nigeria’s oil industry by a series of bombings of strategic infrastructure, which reduced Nigeria’s oil output to a ten-year low.
In 2015, Nigeria was producing 1.9 million barrels of oil daily. The very next year, our output was half that.
Not only were these groups killing soldiers and civilians in their bombing campaign, but they managed to reduce Nigeria’s oil earnings from a high of $68.44 billion in 2011 to a paltry $17 billion by 2016.
And very few Nigerians outside the Southeast had even heard of the Indigenous People of Biafra or Nnamdi Kanu before 2016. I hadn’t.
But because of the perceived shutting out of the Southeast of Nigeria from the government of General Buhari, especially after nobody from that region was appointed to lead any of Nigeria’s twenty-two military, paramilitary, and security agencies, and were not even included in the previous administration’s borrowing plan, discontent grew in that region of the country.
Nigerians have forgotten that things grew so bad in the Southeast and South-South between 2016 and 2023 that we had internal military operations codenamed Operation Python Dance and Operation Crocodile Smile.
Today, both regions are calm. Piracy has ebbed and is almost nonexistent. Oil production is at a ten-year high. For the first time in over a decade, Nigeria overshot its OPEC quota in 2025 for three consecutive months and is set to do the same in 2026, producing an average of 1.71 million barrels per day.
Meanwhile, almost all of the over a hundred police stations that were closed down by the disturbances in the Southeast have been opened, even as Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of IPOB, and his sidekick, Simon Ekpa, have both been convicted of terrorism and are in prison. At the same time, the Monday sit-at-homes have fizzled out, much to the chagrin of Peter Obi.
The Abuja-Kaduna Road was once a death trap before Tinubu. It is now one of the safest roads in Nigeria. Last year, I travelled on that road without security with journalists in tow.
On July 5, 2022, 400 terrorists on motorbikes invaded Kuje Prisons and killed many prison wardens and freed 879 of their colleagues imprisoned there. They also bombed the Abuja-Kaduna railway and killed many people, even as they took hostages.
They then invaded the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna, and killed or wounded soldiers. They even attacked the Brigade of Guards that protects the President in Abuja.
None of those occurrences is happening today. Abuja is safe. And while we still have incidents of insecurity, they have significantly reduced and are now localised in about six states, where they are being addressed.
So, my question to Mr Momodu is this: On what factual basis have you called President Bola Tinubu a failure?
Notice I did not just give opinions. I backed them up with verifiable data. Can you, Mr Dele Momodu, help Nigerians by providing the data on which you based your judgment?
The only factual basis I can see, if any, is your failure to achieve your political objective, which is a personal failure rather than a failure of the country under the watch of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu!
Bamidele Atoyebi is the Convenor of BAT Ideological Group, National Coordinator of Accountability and Policy monitoring and a publisher at Unfiltered and Mining Reporting.
