How are you doing today?

We are now under 100 days to Nigeria’s presidential election, and today I want you to join me as we make some deductions about leadership and governance.

First, the baseline:

Policies tell you what a government wants to change. The order in which it chooses to make those changes tells you how that government thinks.

Now let’s apply this governance baseline to leadership:

There are never enough resources for government to meet every need at once. So, leadership is about what you choose to do first, what you are prepared to postpone, and who bears the cost of those choices.

When I became Governor of Oyo State in 2019, I knew I had four years to turn things around for our people. So, I came prepared.

We had a Roadmap for Accelerated Development built around the economy, education, healthcare and security.

We understood that an economy cannot grow if the people who keep it moving cannot spend. Workers had to earn. Pensioners had to receive what was due to them. Businesses needed customers with purchasing power.

That meant we had to make some choices about how government would meet its obligations.

Workers needed to be paid.

Pensioners needed to receive their pensions.

There were gratuity arrears going back to 2008.

Yet, we also had a huge infrastructure deficit. And infrastructure supports economic growth.

We could have said government needed the money for infrastructure and asked workers and pensioners to wait.

Instead of choosing between paying people and building infrastructure, we chose to do both.

We paid salaries consistently. We regularised pension payments. We began clearing inherited gratuity arrears.

Across those four years, personnel costs alone were equivalent to about 70% of Oyo State’s federal receipts. But meeting those obligations was our first responsibility.

We still had to find a way to build. So, we looked for innovative ways to finance development.

One of those was the Alternative Project Funding Approach. Contractors financed selected projects upfront, while government repaid over an agreed period.

Going back to our test of leadership, you can see clearly what we chose to do first — meet our obligations. And we accepted the fiscal cost of that choice.

We then had to find ways to fund infrastructure without asking workers and pensioners to bear that cost by waiting for what was due to them.

Now, let’s apply that same question to some of the choices Nigeria has made over the past three years.

The Federal Government announced the removal of petrol subsidy on the first day of assumption of office and, within weeks, moved to a more flexible foreign-exchange regime.

There were economic arguments made for those reforms.

But reform is not only about fixing the numbers. It is also about how people survive the transition.

Three years later, the results tell us something about the thinking of our leaders at the centre — and who and what they chose to prioritise.

The Federal Government has pointed to World Bank and IMF assessments showing improvements in macroeconomic stability.

What they are not highlighting is that, using the World Bank’s national poverty measure, poverty rose from about 56% in 2023 to around 62% in 2026. That translates to roughly 23 million more Nigerians living in poverty.

These 23 million are not just numbers.

They are our parents, neighbours, friends and children.

Macroeconomic stability has not translated at the same pace into jobs, lower poverty and improved living standards for the majority of Nigerians.

That is part of the scorecard the Federal Government must own.

For me, leadership must be able to think about two things at once:

What structural change does the economy need?

and

How do we protect people’s ability to live, work and produce while we make that change?

And if, after four years, a leader has not been able to make those choices work for the people, Nigerians have every right to say:

Let us try someone else.

One presidential term is enough to show what a leader prioritises.

That is why I believe one term is enough to achieve the institutional reset we are proposing across key sectors.

Our agenda will tell Nigerians what we intend to do, what they should expect in Year One, Year Two and Year Three, and how progress will be measured.

So, the next election is ultimately about two questions:

Do you agree with how this government is thinking?

Are you satisfied with what it has chosen to prioritise?

Your vote will answer.

Get your PVC and use it wisely.

Talk to you again soon.