The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) notes President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Independence Day declaration that reducing the cost of living is now a priority of his administration. While this acknowledgement is important, Nigeria’s cost-of-living crisis cannot be honestly addressed without confronting the deeper problems of economic corruption, waste, weak governance and dysfunctional public institutions. The President himself acknowledged that many families continue to struggle with the cost of food, school fees, medical bills and transportation. Nigerians therefore need more than another promise of prosperity; they need a government that confronts the governance failures that make everyday life unnecessarily expensive.
Economic corruption has become a hidden tax on every Nigerian. When public contracts are compromised, public revenues leak through weak systems, patronage overrides value for money, and public resources fail to translate into reliable electricity, roads, healthcare, education, water and security, ordinary citizens ultimately pay the price. Nigeria cannot successfully fight poverty while corruption, waste and institutional weakness continue to undermine the very resources and institutions meant to improve people’s lives. Every naira lost to corruption, inflated contracts, revenue leakages, abandoned projects and wasteful expenditure is money denied to citizens who desperately need functioning public services.
Government must equally accept that badly designed, poorly sequenced or inadequately cushioned economic policies can impose devastating consequences on ordinary people. Economic reform cannot mean endless sacrifice by citizens while corruption, waste, inefficiency and excessive costs within government remain insufficiently addressed. Nigerians should not continually be asked to pay more for fuel, electricity, transportation, food and essential services while public institutions fail to demonstrate equivalent sacrifice, efficiency and accountability. You cannot tax people into prosperity, price the poor out of basic necessities and then present improved macroeconomic indicators as sufficient evidence of economic success.
If President Tinubu is genuinely determined to reduce the cost of living, fighting economic corruption and bad governance must become an integral part of the country’s economic strategy. Government must block revenue leakages, strengthen procurement transparency, recover stolen public assets, sanction corruption, eliminate wasteful expenditure, reduce the cost of governance and ensure that increased public revenues are visibly invested in services that reduce household expenses. Nigerians must be able to experience the benefits of reform through affordable food, transportation, electricity, healthcare and education, as well as stronger purchasing power. The true measure of prosperity is not how much government collects, borrows or announces, but how much dignity, opportunity and economic security citizens experience. Until corruption is reduced, institutions begin to work and public resources genuinely serve the public, Nigerians will continue paying the price of bad governance in every market, every household and every business.
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