Reported by: Ijeoma G | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
A civil society organisation, the Centre for Human Rights and Social Advancement, has accused the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of deliberately shifting the burden of its economic policies onto workers and the poorest Nigerians while shielding the political and economic elite from the consequences of the crisis. In a statement issued on Friday, September 11, 2026, and signed by its Executive Director, Yusha’u Sani Yankuzo, Esq., CEFSAN rejected the Tinubu administration’s presentation of its economic programme as an unavoidable route to national prosperity, arguing instead that the crisis is not fundamentally about scarcity but about ownership, distribution, and class power.
The organisation said the government’s policies had placed an enormous burden on workers, students, pensioners, farmers, artisans, and millions of Nigerians surviving in the informal economy, while wealthy Nigerians and those with political influence remained comparatively insulated from the effects of the economic crisis. “Nigeria’s crisis is not fundamentally a crisis of scarcity but a crisis of ownership, distribution and class power,” CEFSAN said, arguing that millions of Nigerians produce the country’s wealth through their labour, but the benefits remain concentrated in the hands of a small political and economic elite. The group said Nigerians were being asked to endure rising living costs, declining purchasing power, and weakened public services in the name of economic recovery, while the conditions for capital accumulation remained favourable.
At the heart of CEFSAN’s critique is the argument that economic policies are never class-neutral. Decisions on taxation, wages, subsidies, public spending, privatisation, and social services determine which sections of society bear the greatest economic burden. “When workers and poor communities are subjected to austerity while wealth remains concentrated and public resources continue to be vulnerable to elite capture, the state is effectively transferring the cost of economic adjustment onto those least capable of bearing it,” the group said. That single sentence encapsulates the frustration of millions of Nigerians who have watched the cost of petrol, food, transportation, and electricity spiral upwards since the removal of the fuel subsidy in May 2023, while the promised dividends of reform have yet to materialise in their daily lives.
The statistics tell their own story. The removal of the fuel subsidy triggered a sharp rise in petrol prices, transportation costs, and food inflation, while the devaluation of the naira eroded the purchasing power of workers and pensioners. In August 2026, Afenifere, the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, accused the Tinubu administration’s twin policies of subsidy removal and currency devaluation of increasing poverty from 38 per cent under former President Muhammadu Buhari to 66 per cent. The Nigeria Labour Congress said that two years into the Tinubu administration, Nigerian workers and the masses had experienced no gains, only pain and misery. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, has repeatedly accused the government of distorting economic realities, questioning its assertion that workers had benefited from improved welfare and insisting that the Federal Government had yet to fully implement the new minimum wage.
CEFSAN’s demands are sweeping and unapologetically radical. The organisation called on the Tinubu administration to abandon what it described as austerity and neoliberal economic policies and adopt a programme focused on workers and the wider population. It demanded a genuinely living wage, universal and adequately funded public education and healthcare, massive investment in housing, transportation, electricity, and productive industries, as well as progressive taxation on wealth and high incomes. It also called for stronger protection of workers’ rights and decisive action against corruption, illicit financial flows, and the alleged private appropriation of public resources. The group further demanded greater public control and democratic accountability in the management of Nigeria’s natural resources and strategic economic sectors, insisting that the country’s oil, gas, minerals, and productive assets should be treated as a collective national inheritance and used to promote industrialisation, employment, social welfare, and economic sovereignty rather than private enrichment.
The statement is a direct challenge to the Tinubu administration’s economic philosophy, which has been built on the argument that the tough reforms of the past three years were necessary to stabilise the economy and lay the foundation for long-term prosperity. President Tinubu has consistently defended the removal of the fuel subsidy and the floating of the naira as courageous decisions that previous administrations lacked the will to take. In August 2026, the President declared that the economy had stabilised and was on an irreversible path to prosperity, citing a 4.43 per cent GDP growth in the second quarter of 2026, record-high foreign reserves, and an upgraded credit rating. He argued that the reforms were not meant to create challenges but to ensure prosperity reached all Nigerians. However, CEFSAN and a growing chorus of critics argue that the macroeconomic gains have not translated into tangible improvements in the lives of ordinary citizens, and that the burden of adjustment has been borne disproportionately by those who can least afford it.
CEFSAN’s final call was for collective action. It urged workers, trade unions, students, farmers, informal-sector workers, women, youths, and progressive civil society organisations to build peaceful and democratic popular movements capable of challenging inequality and demanding a redistribution of economic and political power. The organisation said Nigerians had endured enough hardship in the name of economic reforms whose benefits remained uncertain while their costs were “immediate and painfully real.” “A society in which the many produce while the few accumulate cannot be described as just, democratic or prosperous,” CEFSAN said. It maintained that Nigeria’s vast wealth should be deployed to guarantee human dignity and social welfare, insisting that economic policy must prioritise human needs over the interests of capital.
The statement lands at a critical moment in Nigeria’s political calendar. With the 2027 general elections approaching, the economy is emerging as the defining issue of the campaign. Opposition parties, labour unions, and civil society groups are increasingly framing the election as a referendum on the Tinubu administration’s economic record. CEFSAN’s intervention adds a sharp and unapologetically class-based analysis to that debate, challenging the government’s narrative of progress and demanding a fundamental redistribution of economic and political power. Whether that message resonates with the millions of Nigerians who have borne the brunt of the reforms will be determined not in the statement itself, but in the voting booths of 2027.
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