Letter from Nigeria: New leader delivers shock therapy

President Tinubu has already targeted major reforms at the country’s dysfunctional downstream and upstream sectors, as well as overhauling monetary policy

Nigerians had low expectations of their new president, Bola Tinubu, who was elected with a record-low 36.61% of the vote in February. As co-founder of the All Progressives Congress party, which brought his predecessor Muhammadu Buhari to power in 2015, Tinubu was regarded as a continuity candidate, unlikely to deliver much-needed reform after eight years of sclerotic Buhari rule. However, Tinubu has made an immediate impact on Nigeria’s political economy, breaking the inertia that characterised Buhari’s tenure and upending the entire petroleum sector—starting with the downstream. Subsidy elimination Tinubu used his inauguration speech in May to end a nearly 50-year-old fuel subsidy. This had