Something About President Tinubu’s Speech On Nigeria’s 65th Independence Day

It would be fair to say that writers of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s speech that was read to mark Nigeria’s 65th Independence Anniversary did a good job with statistics and facts.

It is equally true to say that the good speech does not necessarily amount to a rewarding reality about what Nigerians are going through. Maybe that was what he meant during the 2023 electioneering campaigns when he asked “Na Statistics we go chop?”

President Tinubu said “Our economy has experienced significant growth since 1960.” He went ahead to say that “Nigerians today have ACCESS to better education and healthcare than in 1960. At Independence, Nigeria had 120 secondary schools with a student population of about 130,000. Available data indicate that, as of year 2024, there were more than 23,000 secondary schools in our country. At Independence, we had only the University of Ibadan and Yaba College of Technology as the two tertiary institutions in Nigeria. By the end of last year, there were 274 universities, 183 Polytechnics, and 236 Colleges of Education in Nigeria, comprising Federal, State, and private institutions.”

First, everyone knows that the quality of education acquired and quality of products produced by an academic institution is more important than access to the school. Celebrating access over quality is like celebrating the success of wearing a beautiful dress to a wedding ceremony even though the wedding itself does not eventually hold. The quality of an Elementary 3 school certificate holder of the 60s is better than the quality of  MANY of today’s university graduates. This is despite today’s access to other technological sources of education outside the physical classroom setting. Besides, Nigeria’s population in the 60s of less than 50 million people is not the same as the over 200 million of 2025.

President Tinubu said “we have experienced a significant surge in growth across every sector of our national life since Independence – in healthcare, infrastructure, financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, information technology, aviation and defence, among others.”

While it is hard to deny improvements in infrastructure, financial services, telecommunications, information technology and aviation, our healthcare system has continued to deteriorate, remains one of the worst in the world and will remain so, until we have our President and government officials patronize the health facilities in Nigeria rather than waste our scarce resources travelling abroad to treat the minutest forms of ill health.

According to Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), 820 manufacturing companies closed or suspended production between 2000 and 2008. The Nigeria Chamber of Commerce says 800 companies closed shops between 2009 and 2011 due to harsh operating business environment. In 2024 alone, at least, five major companies exited the market. Many more firms have continued to close doors and reduce their presence in Nigeria between 2020 and 2025. This has done something to unemployment rate vis-a-viz population increase during the journey from six and half decades.

Several times in recent decades, state of emergency has been declared on security. Yet, cross border terrorism, kidnapping, and other forms of crime have continued to fester, even with higher annual budgets. More people have been killed by criminals in Nigeria than the number of people killed in countries where civil war is raging.

“Our country has experienced both the good and the bad times in its 65 years of nationhood, as is normal for every nation and its people. We fought a bitter and avoidable civil war, experienced military dictatorships, and lived through major political crises. In all these, we weathered every storm and overcame every challenge with courage, grit, and uncommon determination. While our system and ties that bind us are sometimes stretched by insidious forces opposed to our values and ways of life, we continue to strive to build a more perfect union where every Nigerian can find better accommodation and find purpose and fulfilment.”

Rather than suppress the possible recurrence of the “bitter and avoidable civil war” of the 60s as Rwanda has done about its 1990 experience, efforts have since after Nigeria’s civil  war, been made by “insidious forces” even in government to empower a recurrence of that evil. Obvious one sided political appointments as regards tribal extraction of appointees and recent renaming of streets in Lagos state from names of people from a particular tribe to people from another are a few examples of deliberate efforts to reinvent the wheel of an evil national experience.

President Tinubu said: “Upon assuming office, our administration inherited a near-collapsed economy caused by decades of fiscal policy distortions and misalignment that had impaired real growth.”

Since 2015, each President that assumed office (he being the second) has made this kind of statement. Unfortunately, the two Presidents Nigeria has had in the last ten of the 65 years have been from the same political party, and he was instrumental to the emergence of his predecessor that reportedly wasted an eight-year opportunity for the country’s progress.

He also said: “We chose the path of tomorrow over the comfort of today.” The current administration has a lot of explaining to do as regards the wasteful lifestyle of government and its officials amidst high poverty rate and hunger and how it matches choosing “the path of tomorrow over the comfort of today.”

The President is relatively correct when he says “In resetting our country for sustainable growth, we ended the corrupt fuel subsidies and multiple foreign exchange rates that created massive incentives for a rentier economy, benefiting only a tiny minority. At the same time, the masses received little or nothing from our Commonwealth. Our administration has redirected the economy towards a more inclusive path, channelling money to fund education, healthcare, national security, agriculture, and critical economic infrastructure, such as roads, power, broadband, and social investment programmes.” However, time will tell whether or not “we have finally turned the corner. The worst is over.”

He said Nigeria “has also established itself as the continent’s leading exporter of aviation fuel.” Is Nigeria the continent’s leading exporter of aviation fuel?

“Under the social investment programme to support poor households and vulnerable Nigerians, N330 billion has been disbursed to eight million households, many of whom have received either one or two out of the three tranches of the N25,000 each.”

How sustainable is this economic system of cash sharing to individual citizens? Besides, only very few Nigerians know how this is working. It has been a case of the more you look, the less you see. A better level of transparency is required because this has to do with Nigeria’s commonwealth.

“At its last MPC meeting, the Central Bank slashed interest rates for the first time in five years, expressing confidence in our country’s macroeconomic stability.” This is good but players in an economic gateway sector like aviation are still looking forward to single-digit interest loans to enable local airlines survival.

“The accurate measure of our success will not be limited to economic statistics alone, but rather in the food on our families’ tables, the quality of education our children receive, the electricity in our homes, and the security in our communities.”

You have said it all Your Excellency!. Please, work the talk. Happy 65th Independence Anniversary! May God continue to bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.