Abuja/Lagos — History rarely offers a clean slate, but for Nigeria, the decade under the All Progressives Congress (APC) has felt like a prolonged erasure of the middle class. Since 2015, the promise of “Change“ has devolved into a grueling endurance test. While President Bola Tinubu’s administration argues that its “Renewed Hope“ agenda is the bitter medicine required to cure a comatose giant, the diagnosis remains grim: the Nigerian patient is becoming too poor to afford the cure.
The Macro-Fiasco
The APC’s economic legacy is defined by a staggering loss of purchasing power. In 2015, the naira traded at approximately 197 to the dollar. By mid-2026, despite a slight stabilization following the chaotic floatation of 2024, the currency languishes in a completely different stratosphere.
The administration’s decision to remove the fuel subsidy on “Day One“ was economically courageous but socially reckless. Without a robust social safety net, the move ignited a firestorm of inflation that peaked at generational highs.
- The Debt Overhang: Under the APC, Nigeria’s public debt has ballooned, with debt-to-revenue ratios often crossing the 90% threshold. The government is effectively borrowing to pay interest on what it already owes.
- The GDP Mirage: While the World Bank forecasts a 3.7% growth for 2026, this “progress“ is invisible to the 100 million Nigerians living in multidimensional poverty. Growth that does not outpace population expansion is, in real terms, a decline.
A State of Insecurity
Beyond the balance sheets, the APC has overseen a profound erosion of the state’s monopoly on violence. The failure to contain banditry in the North-West and the persistence of the “unknown gunmen“ phenomenon in the South-East have created an internal blockade.
“Nigeria is no longer a country at war, but it is no longer a country at peace,“ noted one regional analyst. The economic cost of this insecurity – measured in abandoned farmlands and disrupted supply chains – is a primary driver of the current food crisis.
The 2027 Reckoning
As the political cycle turns toward 2027, the ruling party faces a crisis of legitimacy. The “shock therapy“ of Tinubunomics has, so far, produced more shock than therapy. For the APC to justify its continued stay in power, it must move beyond correcting “structural distortions“ and start delivering “stomach infrastructure.“
The argument for dislodging the APC rests on a simple, data-driven premise: a decade of governance should leave a nation better than it found it. On almost every metric – based from the cost of a bag of rice to the safety of the Abuja-Kaduna highway – the APC has struggled to meet its own benchmarks.
If the current administration cannot bridge the gap between its “green shoots“ of reform and the empty bowls of its citizens, the call for a political reset will not just be an opposition slogan – it will be a national necessity.