Governance | Policy
Buhari is Gone. But Buharinomics Lives On
Few Nigerians, living or dead, have commanded the enduring loyalty that Muhammadu Buhari did. His name meant more than politics. In Lagos, I remember seeing his military-era portrait plastered on keke and okada, before he was elected in 2015. To date, many believe he was corruption-free, a tag former public office holders do not enjoy in Nigeria.
Buhari’s election in 2015 was a statement; Nigerians believed their votes counted, and they had no interest in leaving the incumbent party in power. As a former military leader, he was marketed as the strong arm that would tame insecurity and stamp out corruption. His visit to Nigerian states was welcomed by hundreds, singing the praises of Sai Baba; a sight some would wish for, but cannot have without backdoor coercion. In 2019, his mandate was renewed — an affirmation of the influence that Sai Baba wielded. Nigerians believed in Buhari.
But his death isn’t just a moment for political remembrance, mourning or even celebration. It is an opportunity for reflection and a hard pivot. While Buhari may be gone, his economic worldview is still with us, an ideology rooted in a blend of state control, protectionism, and populism. It is a doctrine we have come to know, half-mockingly, half-resignedly, as Buharinomics.
Buharinomics: A Nigerian Cocktail
Buharinomics was never formally declared as an economic policy. Its logic emerged gradually through budget speeches, central bank circulars, presidential silences, and the rhetoric of self-reliance. What it lacked in coordination, it made up for in conviction. If it were a drink, it would read like a bitter cocktail: a base of protectionism, a shot of economic nationalism, a squeeze of fiscal populism, and a dash of monetary interference.
It was not just Buhari’s idea. It was a consensus that already lived in the minds of many Nigerians, both in and out of government: that the state must do all the heavy lifting, that open markets are not ideal, that the nation must produce everything it consumes, and that reforms that inconvenience the poor should be avoided. What Buhari did was affirm these instincts, not invent them. Many around him acted not by compulsion, but in shared confidence that they were doing the right thing.
Four key beliefs defined this worldview, each playing out in policy with consequences that still reverberate.
1. Statism Without Structural Reform
From transport infrastructure to power transmission deals, Buhari’s administration invested heavily in infrastructure. Projects like the Lagos–Ibadan standard gauge rail, the Second Niger Bridge, and the Siemens power project defined the government’s physical footprint. Between 2015 and 2023, the federal budget grew nearly fivefold, and debt ballooned along with it. By 2022, interest on debt payment accounted for over 90% of the federal government’s revenue.
Yet beneath this spending lay a refusal to reform the structure of the economy and public finance. The tax base remained narrow, the civil service grew in size, and the budget projections remained unrealistic.
Buharinomics believed in a big, ambitious state. But it did not believe in rethinking what that state should look like, or how it should sustain itself. There was no redesign — only expansion.
That belief in government as prime mover, even when overburdened, also shaped its approach to trade.
2. Protectionism and Import Substitution
A defining move under Buhari was the Central Bank’s decision to exclude 43 product categories from access to foreign exchange at official rates. These ranged from rice and toothpicks to cement and tomato pastes. The message was clear: Nigeria must produce what it consumes.
This instinct to close the gates did not start with Buhari. The automotive policy, which dramatically increased tariffs on imported vehicles, was introduced in 2013 under the Jonathan administration. The same applies to the push for increased local rice production, which Buhari inherited and expanded.
Buhari fully embraced protectionism, framing it as patriotic. The popular slogan “produce what we eat and eat what we produce” became more than a talking point. But the problem was not only protection, it was insulation. Local industries were not just shielded from imports; they were spared the pressure to become competitive.
Consumers bore the costs, and the economy adjusted around inefficiency. Yet the idea persisted because it felt right. It sounded like sovereignty.
It also made it easier to justify direct state intervention when industries could not perform on their own.
3. Monetary Interventionism
Over Buhari’s two terms, the Central Bank of Nigeria evolved from a monetary authority to something closer to an economic engine. Its intervention portfolio exploded, with numerous programmes spanning agriculture, housing, manufacturing, and the creative economy. The lender of last resort morphed into the most active creditor.
By 2022, it had disbursed more than ₦9 trillion in targeted funding, within three years. To date, there has been no comprehensive assessment of all the CBN’s interventions across sectors during that period and the extent of their reach.
These were not short-term stimulus schemes. They were structured like development plans. The CBN’s Real Sector Support Facility funded projects in manufacturing and agro-processing, to grow these sectors and importantly, conserve foreign exchange. The National Mass Metering Programme, was funded through the same intervention windows. The Cotton, Textile and Garment (CTG) sector also received interventions including the provision of seeds to cotton farmers, attempts to revive the textile industry.
This was a central bank stepping into roles that are outside its primary remit and overestimating its expertise. But more importantly, it reflected a belief that monetary tools could substitute for economic strategy. The problems of productivity, cost, and competitiveness could be solved by lowering interest rates and disbursing credit directly to market participants.
This central role was never seriously questioned by institutions meant to act as checks. Legislators only began raising eyebrows when the CBN governor expressed his interest in running for President.
Where direct intervention was not possible, the state turned to an all too familiar tool, price suppression.
4. The Politics of Low Prices
The Buhari administration kept electricity tariffs largely frozen, even as inflation rose and the naira depreciated. Operators in the sector ran at a loss, with the government stepping in to subsidise the shortfall on paper. While petrol prices were raised at certain points, full deregulation was postponed, and when the Petroleum Industry Act finally formalised subsidy removal, implementation was pushed beyond Buhari’s exit.
This pattern extended to other areas. Telecos were not permitted to raise pricing, a move that reinforces the widespread acceptance of Buharinomics. Tuition increases in federal universities were resisted or discouraged, even with the government’s inability to keep them in good shape. In all cases, the intent was to keep prices low in nominal terms, even if it meant poor service delivery, heavy fiscal transfers, or massive arrears.
This was not reform. It was avoidance. The political cost of letting prices reflect reality was too high and so, the government opted for delay, despite the long-term strain it created.
All of this worked because the belief system itself had wide appeal. It did not need daily instructions from above. It was already moving through the bloodstream of policymaking.
Buharinomics did not function as a master plan. It functioned as a mood. A deeply held faith that Nigeria needed protection, not exposure. Control, not competition. Spending, not restructuring. This worldview that still shapes decisions in ways many do not recognise, and few are willing to challenge.
More Than a Man: The People’s Economics Endures
Buharinomics was never the doctrine of a lone man. It was the articulation of ideas many Nigerians already believed. The instinct to protect local industries from competition, the belief that government spending signals care and the preference for cheap prices, even if subsidised by debt or distortion. These ideas didn’t need to be taught, they were already common sense.
That is what makes Buharinomics so enduring. Its staying power doesn’t lie in the elegance of its design or the success of its outcomes. It lies in the fact that it felt right to most people. Even today, many Nigerians do not consider these beliefs ideological, they see them as pragmatic, patriotic, and people-centred. Long before Buhari entered Aso Rock in 2015, his predecessors had already set the stage.
The automotive policy, introduced under the Jonathan administration, is a case in point. By hiking import tariffs on fully built cars to 70% and offering incentives to local assemblers, the government hoped to spur a domestic vehicle industry. The policy struggled to achieve its goals but stuck around. Buhari inherited it and embraced its logic. The policy is still in place,although adjusted downwards, despite repeated calls for a rethink. That kind of continuity only happens when a policy is seen not as one leader’s initiative, but as national gospel.
Rice offers a similar example. Tariffs and bans on imported rice have been a feature of Nigerian trade policy since the 1970s, justified by the need to protect local farmers, save foreign exchange, and reduce import dependence. A ban on imported rice existed between 1978 and 1979, and again between 1985–1994. In years without outright ban, varying double digit tariffs were in place, delivering price surges, smuggling, and shortages. Buhari’s predecessor raised the import tariff to 100% in 2013.
The Buhari administration intensified the approach, adding FX restrictions and border closures. It was more aggressive, but not conceptually different as the belief that Nigeria must produce its own rice had long taken root.
This shared conviction extended beyond tariffs and trade. During Buhari’s tenure, university fees remained largely flat as with those before him. While public universities groaned under funding constraints, the federal government resisted adjustments. It wasn’t until a new administration introduced a student loan programme that fee increases were greenlighted. Even then, those increases triggered debate and confusion, a signal that Nigerians still expect tertiary education — like electricity, like petrol — to remain firmly within the state’s protective reach.
None of these moves were carried out in isolation. Buhari didn’t invent the disinterest in markets or the celebration of state power. His administration simply expressed those ideas in full colour. The central bank’s embrace of interventionism — pumping money into dozens of sectors with minimal accountability — felt radical in scale, but not in intent. The idea that the state should not just regulate the economy but actively direct its outcomes was not controversial, it was familiar.
This is what makes Buharinomics dangerous. It didn’t rely on repression, it relied on consensus. When policy follows belief, resistance is weakened. People stop asking questions because the answers already feel obvious. But when belief persists even after the consequences are felt, then the ideas survive, waiting to be picked up by whoever comes next.
Some might say the problem with Buharinomics wasn’t the ideas, but how they were implemented. The “how,” they argue, was flawed; the ideas, noble. But with economic thinking, ideas carry within them the tools and limits of their execution. You cannot cook spoilt food well. An uncritical belief in the state’s omnipotence, or in the virtue of shielding citizens from the full price of things, leads predictably to bloat, distortion, and decay. The issue is not that such ideas are always bad. It’s that their trade-offs are rarely acknowledged, and even less often weighed.
Strains of this thinking still echo in his successor’s administration. What some have called Tinubunomics is shaping up to be both an embrace and a departure from Buharinomics; a double bind for a government already thinking about re-election.
But while leaders may improvise, the public rarely resets. That is the bigger story, and the one this essay hopes you’ll sit with.
What Happens Now?
Buharinomics didn’t end with Buhari because it was never just about him.
To look back now and curse his eight-year tenure without questioning the beliefs we still hold is to miss the real lesson. A new administration may wear a different mask, speak a different grammar, and signal reform, but if its politics, press, and people all still believe in the economic logic of Buharinomics, not much will change.
Listen closely to the public mood, on the radio, in danfo buses, on podcasts, on expert panels, on social media, and you’ll hear the echoes. The unbelief in markets, the romanticism of self-sufficiency and the call for government to intervene not as referee, but as player, coach, and financier.
We saw this after subsidies were removed. There were demands for price controls, raids on warehouses, and even calls for the central bank to keep behaving like a development bank. A former agriculture minister criticised the removal of food import duties for 150 days. Others floated a petrol import ban, willing to hand monopoly power to a single local refinery, proof that protectionist instincts endure, especially when dressed in the language of patriotism and industrial policy. These weren’t outliers, they were symptoms of a doctrine that still lives in our bloodstream.
This is not a call to do the opposite of what he did. It is a call to understand what we believe about the role of the state, the value of markets, and the real cost of shielding citizens from pain. Economics is always a series of trade-offs, but Buharinomics was sold as salvation; growth without sacrifice, self-sufficiency without scale, intervention without inflation, and subsidies without consequence. A gentle fantasy.
As we live through an era where Buhari no longer walks the earth, occasionally pause to examine the ideas you still carry. To have suffered through Buharinomics and still believe in its logic, rename and repeat it, that would be the real tragedy.
PS: As is customary, leave a clap if this was worth your time 🙂
PSS: I am grateful to for taking so many great shots of Muhammadu Buhari. I was spoilt for choice in choosing the cover photo, making a last minute change in the end. Thank you for your service Mr Bayo 🫡
A few related good reads
- The Tragedy of Buharism by : https://rpublc.com/june-july-2025/tragedy-of-buharism/
- Are food prices in Nigeria higher than almost everywhere else? by : https://nonso2.substack.com/p/are-food-prices-in-nigeria-higher
- Man of Consequence by : https://www.1914reader.com/p/man-of-consequence
- What is President Buhari’s economic legacy? by Michael Famoroti: https://www.stears.co/article/what-is-president-buharis-economic-legacy/
- Muhammadu Buhari’s tech legacy in Nigeria, from Startup Act to Twitter ban by : https://techcabal.com/2025/07/14/buhari-tech-legacy/
