By Tunji Olaopa

Leading the Nigerian state, by any standard of leadership, is the most tasking of any leadership endeavor one can consider. Leading such a postcolonial state must be situated within the historical and political context of the trajectory of the state—it is postcolonial, it is plural with the enormous weight of over two hundred million people fragmented into nations and ethnicities; it has been misgoverned for over six decades, its governance template has remained external, and its current human development standing is abysmal. How should such a leader bearing the weight of over two hundred million Nigerians and their collective disaffection be assessed and then judged?

That question is a fundamental one because a leader can be mis-assessed and hence unfairly judged based on parameters and criteria that could make no sense of the context of governance and the specific challenges of the leadership. In other words, one must be careful in judging a leader based on frameworks that are not carefully crafted to connect leadership achievements to the contexts where those achievements could make the most impacts. I am specifically saying that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s leadership achievements must be properly situated and benchmarked against the highest parameter that the African continent can produce.

There is no other leadership benchmark for measuring leadership quality on the continent than the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. In looking forward to the general elections in 2027, this leadership prize constitutes the framework that enables a far more rigorous and issue-based discussion than the staccato burst of uninformative and inchoate reactions from oppositional political parties.

The question then is: what does the Mo Ibrahim leadership prize enable us to benchmark against the current governance efforts and future development possibilities of the Tinubu administration? What can Nigeria and her governance matrixes learn from the African good leadership practices to raise the governance standards, post-2027?

Established in 2006, the award for Achievement in African Leadership celebrates an outstanding and democratically elected African executive leadership (head of state or government) that has demonstrated an unparallel merit in facilitating the protection of human rights, strengthen democracy and democratic institutions, and enable sustainable development. The award is not an annual one. Rather, it is constituted whenever the committee is made aware of any candidates with the possibility for being conferred with it. And over the twenty years since it was established, the African Leadership award has gone to recipients: Joachim Chissano, Mozambique (2007), Nelson Mandela, South Africa (2007), Festus Mogae, Botswana (2008), Pedro Pires, Cape Verde (2011), Desmond Tutu, South Africa (2012), Hifikepunye Pohamba, Namibia (2014), Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia (2017), and Mahamadou Issoufou, Niger (2020). Unfortunately for the continent, the prize was not awarded since 2020 as no qualifying candidates had been found to possess the qualities the award demands.

Unfortunately, also, no Nigerian executive leader has made the cut too. Those who have won, including Mandela and Tutu who got the prize on special recognition, have contributed outstanding development to their various states, and impacted democratic governance. Former president Issoufou drove down poverty in fragile Niger from 48 per cent to 40 per cent through solid macroeconomic growth.

Mandela and Chissano strengthened the democratictransition process by letting go of power after their various terms, despite their popularity. Johnson Sirleaf, despite the deep challenge of governing a war-torn country, was able to lay the foundation for a lasting national unity in ways that also enabled social inclusion and economic opportunities especially for women. Former President Pohamba supervised a series of formidable and resilient democratic institutions that made democratic governance possible and all too easy. This also coupled with a vigorous anti-corruption framework that assists the task of good governance.

Benchmarking the Tinubu administration against these past laureates, as well as the African leadership ideals of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, might first appear as an exercise in futility at several points. First, the prize is not awarded until three years after the prospective candidate has left office. And President Tinubu is barely out of office. Second, the Tinubu administration does not appear anywhere near the achievements that the past laureates of the award recorded. And third, it appears too foolhardy to even put President Tinubu in contention for the African Leadership award when Nigeria’s governance and development matters stand too dismal. But then it is only a superficial consideration of the issues that would raise these points. A deeper scrutiny yields a different understanding.

Highlighting the African Leadership award as a benchmark for spotlighting the achievements or otherwise of the Tinubu administration is first a very good way to redirect the campaign focus that has hitherto been directed at witch-hunting the reputational credentials of the president when there are more significant matters of state that could swing the upcoming general elections in 2027 in favor of millions of Nigerians. But more than this, the African Leadership prize provides a framework by which a government could orient itself on what real leadership means especially within a specific governance context that is not defined by external parameters.

The focus of the Mo Ibrahim Achievement in African Leadership award is a leadership that is grounded firmly in human development that impacts the millions of people that live in any African states. This speaks concretely to government policies that lift people out of poverty, that undermine the cankerworms of political and bureaucratic corruption in ways that undermine infrastructural development, that pour government’s considered funding into healthcare and education, that deepen the respect for democratic accountability and transparency, and so on. Within this context of governance standard, we must be sufficiently fair as not to simply deny the efforts that the almost-four-years of the Tinubu administration has yielded.

In crafting the Renewed Hope Agenda, and aligning it with the objective of making Nigeria a $1trn economy by 2030, the Tinubu administration signaled a powerful governance and development focus that has produced some massive macroeconomic achievements. In other words, the administration, since its inception, has strategically pursued structural reforms of all sorts that are meant to rehabilitate Nigeria’s lost decades in governance and development planning.

A few of these are worth itemising. Take security simply because it constitutes the bedrock of any national development. Given the alarming rate at which insecurity, through banditry, kidnapping and insurgency, has continue to undermine Nigeria’s investment profile, the Tinubu administration has raised a multi-level reform approach that infuses a N500 billion emergency security fund that is meant to tackle banditry and insurgency through military intervention and intelligence gathering. This is bolstered by the significant constitutional move to decentralise the structure of the police force while also expanding the strength of the security forces.

Next is the all-purpose tax laws reform that serves as a complement to reforms for economic growth. The Nigeria Tax Act, Nigeria Tax Administration Act, Nigeria Revenue Service Act, and the Joint Revenue Board Act are all meant to fundamentally overhaul Nigeria’s tax architecture in an even more significant step to clear the cobwebs attached to the ease of doing business while also enhancing the tax administration regime for government to earn more money for development purposes.

While the inflation rate jumped to an all-time high due to the removal of petrol subsidy and the floating of the foreign exchange in 2023, further consistent policy actions have since seen inflation dropped to 15.39 per cent in 2026, with food inflation falling from 20.31 per cent in July 2026 to 19.57 per cent.

But then, more is required. Economic reforms must be steered consciously and steadily towards people-centered governance frameworks that will not achieve macroeconomic stability on the one hand, while millions keep suffering economic deprivations on the other. In other words, macroeconomic stabilisation of the Nigerian economymust be transformed into micro-economic human development policies that have the capacities to change the citizens’ welfare and well-being. The growth of the Gross Domestic Product cannot win the Mo Ibrahim Achievement in African Leadership prize; it must be Gross Domestic Happiness that tracks the real happiness and well-being of the citizens.

This demands that the Tinubu administration must consolidate its macro-economic achievements by doubling down on governance and development reforms that bring well-being closer to millions of Nigerians. When the Bhutan government introduced the concept of Gross National Happiness or Gross Domestic Happiness, it benchmarked four pillars—socio-economic development, good governance, cultural preservation and environmental conservation—across nine domains that range from living standards, education and health to the usage of time, ecological diversity and community vitality.

In Nigeria’s case, five thematic areas are crucial for the governance reforms. First, the administration needs to establish and efficiently track a local Human Development Index. This will enable the government to introduce, monitor and evaluate social impact parameters, including the reduction in the rate of out-of-school children, amelioration of multidimensional poverty, critical lessening of maternal mortality rates, and more. Budgetary allocations, especially through the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC), would be measured and evaluated along these indices. Second, the government must focus on structural agrarian reform. This takes attention away from the monocultural economic fixation on crude oil, and the raw commodity export model. Agricultural reform facilitates local value addition that embolden domestic production and eventual industrialisation. For instance, the Tinubu administration must focus on the “Nigeria-First” procurement policy that in turn enables small businesses and local manufacturers.
Three, the administration must necessarily attend to the albatross of the humongous cost of governancespending as a matter of achieving institutional integrity.

This requires, for instance, a policy that manages wastage and reduce institutional redundancies. Rationalising political and administrative spending is the best possible way to achieve public accountability while ensuring that public resources impact public good. The fourth thematic focus of the Tinubu administration is the urgent reskilling of the human capital through massive investments in healthcare services and especially the education system. This involves not just improving the institutional accesses to education, represented by the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) initiative, but also funding vocational and technical education. This enables the government to sync vocational education with entrepreneurial and industrial needs of the country.

The last strategic thematic area is represented by government’s establishment and deepening of social security nets. Hitherto, the palliative solution to, say, the removal of fuel subsidy has not only been draining the coffers of government, it has also facilitated further political and bureaucratic corruption. A more permanent structural intervention requires the establishment of a national social register and database that enable biometric verification of vulnerable recipients. This is complemented by the strengthening of the Nigerian Consumer Credit Corporation that assists in redeeming the purchasing power of middle-class Nigerians.

If President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must enter the Hall of Fame of Outstanding African Leadership, he has to put in the workand extend the framework of his macroeconomic stabilisation to strengthening micro-economic indices that directly affect millions of Nigerians. Another four years in office would be an opportunity not just to be a Mo Ibrahim leadership laureate, but to essentially lay a solid foundation of a legacy of good governance that transform the lives of millions of Nigerians.

Prof. Olaopa is chairman Federal Civil Service Commissio and Professor of Public Administration.