By Stanley Nkwocha
As dawn settles over Eagle Square in Abuja, what gathers this weekend is not simply a political convention. It is something more consequential. As part of a series of activities to strengthen the All Progressives Congress (APC) and prepare for the 2027 general elections, the event will focus on electing a new National Executive Council, following nationwide ward and state congresses.
Since Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999, party conventions have often been moments of negotiation, consolidation, and occasionally rupture. However, this one carries a different weight. It comes at a time the country is attempting one of the most ambitious socio-economic restructuring in its post-independence history.
For those involved in the internal workings of the APC, the exercise is neither ceremonial nor routine. It is a reckoning with a set of promises made under difficult circumstances, and an attempt to measure whether those promises have begun to take institutional form.
Nigeria has been here before. In the early 1980s, under austerity. In the mid-1990s, under structural adjustment. Each period demanded sacrifice, but often without a clear social contract between policy and people. The present moment attempts something more deliberate. It seeks to restructure without losing political legitimacy, a task that has historically proven elusive in many developing economies.
To understand the significance of this moment, one must return to May 2023, when the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu assumed office. The Nigerian economy at that time was constrained by a set of entrenched distortions. Fuel subsidies alone had consumed trillions of naira over decades, often benefiting intermediaries more than ordinary citizens. Multiple exchange rate windows had created arbitrage opportunities that discouraged productive investment.
The decision to remove fuel subsidy was not unprecedented in Nigerian history. Attempts had been made under successive administrations, including those of President Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, both of which encountered strong public resistance. What distinguishes the 2023 reform is the simultaneity of actions. The unification of exchange rates occurred alongside subsidy removal, signalling a willingness to confront structural inefficiencies in a coordinated manner.
The immediate effects were painful. Inflation rose, and the cost of living increased sharply. Yet, fiscal indicators began to shift. Government revenues expanded significantly, with increases exceeding nine trillion naira within a year. More importantly, the ratio of revenue to debt service, which had approached unsustainable levels close to total revenue, began to decline. For a country that had been spending nearly all it earned on servicing debt, this shift represents a critical turning point. Historically, countries that have successfully navigated similar reforms did so by pairing fiscal discipline with targeted social support.
Infrastructure has long been a measure of state capacity in Nigeria. From the railway expansions of the colonial era to the oil-funded road networks of the 1970s, each phase of development has been marked by attempts to physically integrate the country’s vast geography.
The current administration’s emphasis on large-scale projects such as the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and the Sokoto-Badagry corridor reflects a return to this tradition. These construction projects are attempts to redraw the nation’s economic geography by linking production zones to consumption centres and export routes.
Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit has been estimated by the African Development Bank to require investments running into hundreds of billions of dollars over several decades. Against this backdrop, each completed corridor represents more than asphalt and concrete. It signals the possibility of reducing transaction costs, improving market access, and encouraging regional specialisation.
Few issues capture Nigeria’s past economic problems more clearly than its energy sector. For decades, the country exported crude oil while importing expensive refined petroleum products, which drained our foreign exchange. This dependence on foreign fuel has finally begun to change due to major private sector investments, most notably the Dangote Refinery.
This transition is especially important given the current Israel-Iran war, which has caused global oil prices to spike. Without these domestic refining capabilities, the high cost of imports would have terribly hit the country, leading to extreme inflation and even greater economic instability.
Nigeria’s demographic structure has always been both an opportunity and a challenge. With a median age under twenty, the country’s future is inseparable from the aspirations of its youth. What is emerging within the political process is a recognition that participation can no longer be mediated solely through traditional structures.
The increasing role of digital platforms in political communication reflects this shift. Engagement is becoming more immediate, more decentralised and, the in many cases more demanding. Programmes such as student loan initiatives, digital enterprise funding, and skills development schemes by the federal government are attempts to translate demographic potential into economic productivity. The scale of these interventions remains a subject of debate, but their direction signals an acknowledgement that economic transformation cannot occur without human capital development.
On the cost of food, the ongoing reforms of the Tinubu administration are having a positive effect. According to 2025 data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), food prices had eased on a month-on-month basis by September 2025. Prices for key food items such as rice, garri, and tomatoes dropped slightly in September and in November 2025, thereby improving supply.
Historically, countries that have harnessed youthful populations, such as South Korea in the latter half of the twentieth century, did so through sustained investment in education and export-oriented industrialisation. Nigeria’s path will necessarily differ, but the underlying principle remains the same.
Granted, some reforms come with momentary hardships, but there have been sustained attempts by the current administration to immediately mitigate these challenges. Targeted interventions for small businesses, the increase in national minimum wages, the cash transfers, and temporary tariff adjustments on essential goods further indicate a balancing act between reform and relief.
Every political era seeks a defining narrative. For the current administration, that narrative is still being written. The convention in Abuja offers an opportunity to articulate it more clearly, both to party members and to the broader public. Nigeria’s post-independence history has been marked by cycles of ambition and disappointment. Each generation has confronted the question of whether structural change is possible within existing institutions. The answer has often been uncertain.
What is unfolding now is an attempt to answer that question differently. Whether it succeeds will depend on consistency, institutional discipline, and the capacity to translate policy into lived experience.
The significance of this convention, therefore, lies not in its speeches or ceremonies, but in what it represents. It is a moment where political intent meets economic and social reality, and where the future of governance in Nigeria is being quietly but decisively, negotiated.
Nkwocha, the Senior Special Assistant to The President on Media & Communications (Office of The Vice President), is serving as Vice Chairman 2 in the Digital and New Media Sub-Committee in the 2026 APC National Convention Committee.