Tanimu Yakubu, Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, has clarified that Tinubunomics was never designed as a promise of immediate prosperity but as a challenging macro-fiscal reset executed under stringent constraints.
Tinubunomics
Yakubu made the clarification in a policy note titled “Tinubunomics and the Arithmetic of Illusion,” cautioning against misleading public narratives that rely on inflated headline figures rather than sound public finance principles.
He attributed much criticism of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s fiscal framework to confusion over revenue, cash and financing distinctions, as well as between total federation-wide collections and federal retainable spending.
“Tinubunomics was never a promise of instant abundance. It is a macro-fiscal reset undertaken within hard constraints: inherited debt service, FX realism, security spending, legacy arrears, and competing constitutional obligations,” Yakubu stated.
He debunked viral claims of the Federal Government accessing ₦150 trillion or more, labelling them “arithmetic illusions” where borrowing is mistaken for income and federation receipts equated to spendable federal funds.
Yakubu highlighted frequent errors such as lumping gross tax and oil revenues without netting deductions, double-counting customs receipts, and portraying borrowing as free money, noting that subsidy removal closes fiscal holes gradually rather than yielding instant cash.
On rising debt stock, he explained that much of the naira increase stems from exchange-rate revaluation of existing dollar-denominated obligations, not new borrowing, describing contrary claims as a “category error.”
In Nigeria’s federal system, he stressed, revenues undergo statutory sharing, with the true federal position reflecting retained revenue plus deficit financing, not aggregated gross inflows for dramatic effect.
Yakubu urged Nigerians to apply proper audit logic in scrutinising government performance, warning: “Anything else is not scrutiny. It is a theatre. And no amount of theatrical arithmetic can substitute for fiscal discipline.”
