- By Semiu Okanlawon
My friend, Bamidele Johnson, ever witty and acerbic in his facebook posts, left no one in doubt what he was saying in his January 4 menu titled “Is Our Prophetic Industry Operating Below Installed Capacity?”
But Johnson’s derisive reference to the “Men of God,” a la his soulmate, Ebenezer Obadare, the United States-based Professor who once authored Pastor Adeboye and Casino Penteconstalism, is not the subject of this piece lest readers misconstrue “What 2025 Holds for Nigeria?” as an attempt to join the list of those who ‘see’ tomorrow and come forward to announce the doomsdays.
I also don’t have to look into the prediction book of the Redeemed Christian Church of God’s Daddy G.O; or those of Bishop David Oyedepo of the Living Faith Church Worldwide; Primate Elijah Ayodele of the INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church or the very dramatic Chukwuemeka Cyril Ohanaemere, known more as Odùméje and the General Overseer of the Mountain of Holy Ghost Intervention and Deliverance Ministry and other future-telling prophets and fortune tellers to know what the new year 2025 holds for Nigeria.
Any keen student of the Nigerian economic, political and social class should be able to clinically and forensically examine the underbelly of our national life; do a proper prognosis of what will run through from January to December when we shall be saying Happy New Year again, welcoming 2026 for before we know it, the New Year will soon run its course.
Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as of January 1, 2025, has done 584 days in office as Nigeria’s 6th democratically elected President.
Morning shows the day! And that is why there shouldn’t, in the first place, have been much uproar when he formally announced on May 29, 2023 at his handover ceremony what had earlier been sealed as an end to fuel subsidy by the preceding administration.
That singular act, perfected before his assumption of office and left for his ‘unveiling ceremony’ has defined his administration and will definitely define what we can safely call the Tinubunomics for a long time to come.
Thanks to the current administration, we have now been made to realise that we have not lived by the exact value of our Naira and that everything being subsidised has done incalculable injuries to the body of our economy.
If it is true that we have all lived ‘fake lives’ possibly in the last three decades or more of our national life, Tinubunomics, tagged T-Pains by his critics, will remain the indisputable shaper of our lives henceforth.
Let’s face the reality, is fuel likely to sell for N500 per litre again as some marketers are predicting even if we add ten new refineries? Will a bag of rice come down to N50,000 even if we turn the whole of the Northern states to rice farms? They have reminded us that if in doubt, just ask your family member abroad how much he buys a tuber of yam and convert that amount into Naira. Whatever figure you get is the true, global worth of your local currency in international values. To be sure while writing this, I actually stumbled on a pack of two tubers with the price tag £28.
But then, it pains to the marrow that the ‘fake lives’ all Nigerians have been accused of living have been the exclusive preserves of the privileged. If anyone is to be pilloried for eating up all the fortunes of the unborn generations, it should be those who cannot explain the sources of wealth for their fleet of private jets, unoccupied mansions in Abuja, Lagos, Dubai, New York and London and who have multiple bank accounts opened in Switzerland and other offshore locations.
It is therefore unfair to make that peasant farmer in Gboko, Benue state or the Okada rider in Abule Egba of Lagos state pay the same prices for unguarded lifestyles of yesteryears.
If 2024 is anything to reckon with, Nigeria in 2025 is likely to face a mix of challenges and opportunities across political, economic, and social dimensions.
2025 looks very well to be a continuation of 2024. The unfinished works in the economic reforms will continue to dominate the sphere with tax reforms most likely to stir more controversies of the ethno, geo-political biases.
The Central Bank of Nigeria, central to the monetary re-engineering, will obviously continue to implement strategies to stabilize the Naira, in a such a manner to, at least, regain some of its lost strength. But some limbs will be crushed in the process.
With rising debt levels, Nigeria will need to focus on fiscal discipline and revenue generation to ensure sustainable growth at a time that distressing inflation and employment figures keep staring us in the face. This will come with some hard sacrifices.
On the political front, political parties will definitely open strategies for the 2027 general elections, potentially shifting focus from governance to campaign politics. And since that will also be Tinubu’s mid-term assessment time, opposition parties and figures will be in full speed to make a mess of whatever government calls its successes.
Thus, Tinubu and his government will definitely get darts from Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi and Kwankwaso depending on the alignments that will emerge. Friends of Tinubu in the build up to 2023 who have however fallen by the wayside like Nasir el-Rufai are more likely to group towards taking their pound of flesh. The time of revenge may be near. This is the year the shape of ‘conspiracies’ to happen in 2027 will begin to emerge.
This is the time for the image makers, the spin doctors and the hype men of the president will get their hands and heads more busied.
Of course, I expect that all the fuss about restructuring the country will continue with state police and other appurtenances of decentralisation gaining momentum to bring up the needed balance of power between the federal and sub-national governments.
On security, the fact that the hard decisions taken by the current administration has pushed more people into poverty, even if that may be temporary, portends grave danger for security in 2025.
More street urchins, more neighbourhood touts, more daring criminals and petty thieves and online frauds are possible fallouts as pauperised citizens fight to stay afloat the unstable and virulent economic waters.
Already the first week of the year began with reports of bandits migrating from North-West to the South-West. Indeed, Afenifere, the pan-Yoruba group has asked governors of the South-West states not to take this with levity. But the region can hardly cope with spending fortunes to curtail bandits in the face of the worsening economic crisis.
Ongoing military campaigns to combat Boko Haram, ISWAP, Lakurawa and other smaller allied groups will remain critical, especially in northern Nigeria. We cannot afford to ignore how lack of safety is driving away investments.
While Nigeria faces structural challenges, its youthful population, entrepreneurial spirit, and natural resources offer vast opportunities. Success in 2025 will depend on sustained reforms, inclusive governance, and the resilience of its people.
I watched Vice President Kashim Shetimma when he spoke of his belief that “we have turned a corner,” with the promise that “insha Allah we shall have a very robust economic activity in the New year.”
I leave the rest of Nigerians to believe or disbelieve him when he said “the economy has started picking up and in the coming weeks and months Nigerians will start smiling for the better.”
Are Nigerians seeing what Tinubu, Shettima and other government optimists are seeing? May be, may be not.
The average Nigerian will require more than promises to embrace the economic policies that drove the price of a bag of rice from N28,000 to N110,000 today or why a 5 litre of Kings cooking oil will jump from N5,000 to N22,000 within a spate of four months.
If the Nigerian economy is not insulated from the vagaries of the global trends, then we must not close our eyes and ears to whatever the International Monetary Funds (IMF), World Bank, the African Development Bank and other institutions are saying about what 2025 offers.
In whatever calculations, the wars across the Middle East and parts of Europe will have their impacts on us as international trades are affected while more countries are at each other’s throats as humans seek domination of others amidst resistance and confrontations?
These, through my crystal balls, are what I can see for 2025.