Mr Tanimu Yakubu, the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, says President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms, popularly known as Tinubunomics, were never intended to deliver “instant abundance.”
Yakubu stated this in a statement titled ‘Tinubunomics and the Arithmetic of Illusion’, issued on Sunday in Abuja.
He said much of the criticism against the reforms was built on what he described as misleading arithmetic rather than sound economic analysis.
“A striking feature of Nigeria’s current economic debate is the enthusiasm with which huge numbers are circulated — and the casualness with which they are assembled.
“This is not an economic analysis. It is an arithmetic illusion,” he said.
Yakubu explained that many viral critiques failed to distinguish between revenue, cash and financing, as well as between federation-wide collections and actual Federal Government budgetary resources.
“These are not technicalities. They are the foundation of public finance,” he said.
According to him, borrowing is often wrongly treated as income, while federation revenues are frequently presented as if they were entirely available to the Federal Government.
“Revenue is not the same as cash available to the Federal Government. Borrowing is not income; it is financing and creates future obligations.
“Federation receipts are not equivalent to what the Federal Government can spend,” Yakubu said.
He said critics routinely aggregate tax collections, oil revenues, customs receipts, borrowing and subsidy savings into large headline figures, then question how such sums were spent.
“The result is a dramatic number — ₦150 trillion, ₦170 trillion, ₦180 trillion — followed by the question: where did the money go?
“The answer is straightforward: much of it never existed in the form being implied,” he said.
Yakubu explained that fuel subsidy removal did not generate a pool of discretionary cash but merely closed longstanding fiscal leakages.
He said: “Subsidy reform does not conjure idle cash. It closes a hole.
“The fiscal benefit appears gradually through reduced deficit pressure, improved budgeting discipline and targeted support, not through sudden spendable savings.”
On public debt, he said much of the recent increase in naira-denominated debt resulted from exchange-rate revaluation of existing external obligations, not fresh borrowing.
“When the exchange rate adjusts, the naira value of dollar-denominated debt rises automatically.
“Treating this accounting effect as new borrowing is a category error,” he said.
Yakubu stressed that Tinubunomics was a macro-fiscal reset undertaken within severe inherited constraints, including debt service burdens, security spending, legacy arrears and constitutional obligations.
According to him, Tinubunomics was never a promise of instant abundance.
“It is a structural reset aimed at restoring price signals, strengthening revenue administration, rebuilding credibility and repricing the public balance sheet while protecting the most vulnerable,” he said.
He said proper accountability should focus on federal retained revenue, financing sources, expenditure composition and measurable outcomes.
“Accountability does not begin with social media arithmetic, It starts with audit logic, anything else is theatre,” he said.
