Cover Story

The Jagaban Formula: Inside Tinubu’s Gospel of Hustle that’s Redefining Nigeria’s Economic Engine.

An investigative voyage through the dogma, the data, and the street-level drama of Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s productivity crusade

I. The Sermon from Bourdillon

It is 07:43 on a rain-slick Tuesday in Ikoyi, yet the traffic island outside 10 Bourdillon Road is already a theatre of miracles. Drivers who once cursed the gridlock now roll down their windows, waving green-branded leaflets that promise "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!" A mobile LED truck loops a clip of the president in rolled-up sleeves, declaring: "We will produce what we consume, and we will consume what we produce."

For a man caricatured as the "godfather of Lagos," Bola Ahmed Tinubu has spent his first eighteen months in Aso Rock preaching a doctrine that sounds almost theological: production is redemption. Critics call it sloganeering; aides call it the Jagaban Formula—a cocktail of fiscal shock therapy, import strangulation, and a hustler’s faith in Nigeria’s ability to out-work its problems.

II. The Refinery that Ate the Desert

Nothing embodies Tinubu’s dogma like the Dangote Petrochemical Complex—a monolithic silver city on the edge of the Atlantic. When the president ordered the customs service to "facilitate every bolt, every gasket" needed for final commissioning, sceptics scoffed. Yet by August 2025 the refinery gulped its first million barrels of domestic crude.

Result: Nigeria’s fuel import bill—once a 10-billion annual haemorrhage—has fallen 42 % in three months. Long queues at Apapa port have shortened; diesel prices dipped below ₦750/litre for the first time since 2021. "We are not just refining fuel," plant manager Tunde Olatunji boasts, "we are refining confidence."

But the flip-side is brutal. Subsidy removal doubled petrol prices overnight, igniting a 28 % spike in transport inflation. In Kano, truckers parked their vehicles for a week, forcing the government to release 50,000 metric tonnes of grains to break a mini-strike. "You cannot birth a giant without labour pains," the president told the nation in a rare television interview, fingers drumming the arm-rest like a man counting rosary beads.

III. The Currency Experiment

Tinubu’s first act was to collapse the multiple exchange-rate windows—a sacred cash cow for speculators. The naira crashed instantly, then stabilised. Today, the gap between official and black-market rates is ₦18, the narrowest in a decade.

Winners: exporters who no longer queue for scarce dollars.

Losers: importers of tooth-picks, lace wigs, and frozen pizza—goods now tagged "non-essential" by a presidential circular that reads like a moral lecture.

At Lagos marina, yacht owners grumble about a 40 % luxury import surcharge. One captain, sipping flat champagne, mutters: "He is punishing taste itself."

IV. The Rice Revolt & the Tomato Epiphany

In the floodplains of Kebbi, a quiet revolution is sprouting. The Anchor Borrowers Programme 2.0—funded with ₦200 billion from the petrol subsidy savings—has delivered high-yield rice seedlings to 1.3 million farmers. The result: a 2.1 million metric-tonne harvest, enough to trim imports by 38 %.

Yet the same dogma met its match in Kano’s tomato belt. When a tuta absoluta moth invasion threatened 70 % of the crop, the president’s insistence on "home-grown solutions" delayed pesticide imports. Prices trebled; sacks of tomatoes became status symbols. A chastened cabinet later approved an emergency aerial spray, but not before social media christened the episode "Tinubu’s Tomato Epiphany"—a reminder that productivity without resilience is merely rhetoric.

V. The Tax Ghosts Finally Pay Rent

Under previous administrations only 41 of Nigeria’s 200 largest companies paid company tax. Today, that figure is 129. The lever: a data-sharing accord between the Federal Inland Revenue Service, banks, and the Corporate Affairs Commission. Every invoice above ₦5 million now pings a central server.

Critics cry "digital snooping," but the treasury is smiling. VAT collections hit a quarterly record of ₦709 billion, enough to fund the student-loan scheme that sent 120,000 undergraduates back to campus this semester.

VI. The Human Speed-Bumps

For every buoyant metric there is a face in the shadows.

- Maryam, 34, a single mother in Mararaba, spends ₦1,200 daily on bus fares, double her 2023 bill. "I calculate every kilometre," she sighs.

- Chike, a 28-year-old tech illustrator, saw his monthly data subscription jump 55 %, yet celebrates that international clients now pay him in naira without the old "PayPal gymnastics."

- Alhaji Dantata, a 70-year-old rice miller, cannot remember a better harvest, but diesel for his generators costs ₦820/litre, devouring his margin.

Tinubu’s response is unyielding: "We will not subsidise consumption; we will subsidise production." The sentence has become a catechism recited at cabinet meetings.

VII. The Verdict: Dogma or Destiny?

Eighteen months is a blink in the life of a nation, yet the directional arrows are hard to ignore: more oil drilled at home, more grain harvested at home, more taxes paid at home. Inflation is ugly, but factory output is expanding for the first time in eight years. The stock market—often the first to panic—has added ₦18 trillion in value, a wager by investors that the productivity gamble may pay off.

Still, the social contract wobbles. A three-day nationwide warning strike looms if petrol prices rise again. University lecturers threaten to down tools over unpaid hazard allowances. And in the creeks of the Niger Delta, ex-militants grumble that amnesty stipends are shrinking in real terms.

Inside Aso Rock, a wooden plaque now hangs outside the president’s private office. It bears a single line, half-prayer, half-threat: "Produce or Perish." Whether Nigeria will do the former before the latter is the unanswered question that will define the remainder of the Jagaban years—and perhaps the continent’s most consequential economic experiment of the decade.

This has been The Red Hot Report from Pepper-Room. The news that bears it all.