Tinubu Launches Re-Election Bid as Nigeria’s Cost-of-Living Crisis Deepens
KADUNA, Nigeria — President Bola Tinubu opened his campaign for a second term on Saturday by promising prosperity to a country where the cost of survival has become the defining political fact. The rally in Kaduna launched a presidential contest that will test whether Nigeria’s governing party can turn macroeconomic praise into votes from households battered by fuel prices, a weakened currency and relentless insecurity.
Tinubu told supporters to return him to office in the January 16 election. Thousands filled much of the 10,000-capacity Ranchers Bees Stadium as the All Progressives Congress displayed the machinery behind its bid to keep power. His camp says 32 of Nigeria’s 36 state governors support him, an organizational advantage that no rival can dismiss.
But Nigeria’s election will not turn on stadium choreography alone. Tinubu removed the country’s long-standing fuel subsidy after taking office in 2023, devalued the naira and pursued other market reforms. Creditors and investors welcomed the fiscal shift. Working people absorbed the shock.
Reuters reported that petrol reached roughly 1,400 naira a litre in Lagos and Abuja in September and climbed to 1,500 naira in parts of northern Nigeria. Those prices push up transport, food and every other essential cost in a country where millions already live close to the edge. The government points to stronger reserves and improved investor sentiment. Families measure reform at the market and the filling station.
Tinubu tried to move responsibility away from his own administration. “They created the hunger. They created the poverty. We are trying to eradicate it,” he said of the opposition. That argument may rally loyalists, but it also exposes the central contradiction of his campaign: a president asking voters to endure more pain now in exchange for a recovery that has not reached them.
The opposition remains divided. Former vice president Atiku Abubakar and former Anambra governor Peter Obi — Tinubu’s closest challengers in 2023 — enter the race from separate camps after an alliance meant to unseat the president collapsed. AP reported that more than a dozen candidates are running, but analysts expect another three-way contest among Tinubu, Atiku and Obi.
Fragmentation helped Tinubu in 2023. He won more than 8.7 million votes, against more than 6.9 million for Atiku and 6.1 million for Obi, yet secured one of the lowest vote shares ever recorded by an elected Nigerian president. The same split could again allow a deeply unpopular incumbent to prevail without building a majority coalition.
That is why the campaign’s social question matters beyond party arithmetic. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and one of its largest economies. A government that presents austerity as unavoidable while shielding political power from its consequences offers a familiar bargain: public sacrifice, private confidence and deferred relief.
Security will sharpen the choice. Armed groups and kidnappers continue to terrorize the northwest, while the 17-year Islamist insurgency in the northeast has intensified attacks on military positions. Tinubu launched his campaign on the same day Amnesty International said gunmen killed at least 40 people in Taraba state. Voters are being asked to judge not only whether reform has delivered growth, but whether the state can protect life at all.
Tinubu has said he will personally attend rallies in only 12 states because he must continue governing. The campaign plans a final major rally in Lagos on January 9. His northern test may prove decisive: Atiku retains an established base there, while economic pain and insecurity cut through the APC’s claims of recovery.
The election begins with the governing party powerful, the opposition fractured and the public under pressure. Tinubu wants Nigerians to treat hardship as the price of renewal. His challengers must show they can convert anger into organization. Between those claims stand millions of workers, traders and families who have already paid for reform — and will now decide whether its architect deserves another term.
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