Nigeria is currently undergoing a masterclass in the art of the 'Sacrificial Pivot,' a maneuvers favored by leaders who find the presence of a middle class to be an annoying accounting error. President Bola Tinubu, a man whose relationship with the concept of the 'common good' is likely as distant as a star in a forgotten galaxy, has decided that the Nigerian populace needs to undergo a collective spiritual and physical cleanse. It is not the kind of cleanse found in a high-end wellness retreat in Malibu, but rather the kind that comes from the sudden, violent removal of fuel subsidies and the subsequent skyrocketing of food prices. It is a bold, avant-garde strategy: let us see if an entire nation can survive on a strictly caloric intake of 'Long-Term Hope' and 'Economic Structural Adjustment.' Spoiler alert for the intellectually optimistic: you cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs, but in the current Nigerian context, the eggs have become so prohibitively expensive that only the people breaking them can actually afford to eat the resulting breakfast.

The phrase 'long term' is the favorite refuge of the political grifter. It is a temporal buffer zone where all current failures are safely tucked away and all future successes are promised but never actually scheduled. Tinubu’s administration suggests that these draconian measures—this fiscal flagellation—will eventually stabilize the economy. It is the economic equivalent of burning down a house to save on the heating bill. Yes, the bill will certainly drop to zero, but the homeowner is left sleeping in the smoldering ashes of their own existence. The intellectual laziness required to suggest that starving a population today is the prerequisite for their prosperity tomorrow is nothing short of breathtaking. It assumes that the Nigerian people are some sort of thermodynamic anomaly that can generate life-sustaining energy from the sheer friction of their own suffering. This isn't governance; it is neoliberal alchemy, trying to turn the lead of human misery into the gold of a balanced ledger.

The removal of the fuel subsidy was presented to the world as a heroic act of fiscal responsibility, a necessary 'correction' to satisfy the high priests of global misery at the IMF and the World Bank. To these ivory-tower ghouls, 'correction' is a bloodless term for a systemic mugging. The subsidy was the last remaining thread of the social contract in a country where the state provides little else in the way of functioning infrastructure, reliable electricity, or basic security. Removing it without a robust, pre-existing safety net is not 'reform'; it is a calculated abandonment of the vulnerable. And yet, the international community applauds from the sidelines. Why wouldn't they? It is remarkably easy to cheer for 'market discipline' when it is someone else’s children going to bed hungry. The Right-wing technocrats see it as a triumph of the market, while the Left-wing activists issue their usual performative condemnations from the safety of their laptops, neither group actually caring enough to interrupt their lunch.

Inflation in Nigeria isn't just a decimal point moving across a screen; it is the physical erosion of human dignity. When food prices rise to the point of absurdity, the act of eating becomes a political statement. The government’s insistence that people remain patient while they 'restructure' is a demand for the poor to subsidize the incompetence of the elite. Tinubu and his inner circle are unlikely to be skipping meals while they wait for the 'long-term' benefits to manifest. They are the architects of a stadium they will never have to sit in, watching from the VIP boxes while the spectators are crushed in the aisles. The audacity of asking a father in Lagos to be 'patient' while he watches the price of yams triple is the kind of sociopathic detachment usually reserved for Roman Emperors or Silicon Valley CEOs.

Ultimately, Nigeria has become a tragic testing ground for the failed ideology that treats the economy as a god requiring human sacrifice. The 'reforms' are a form of performance art designed to appease foreign investors, signaling that the country is 'open for business'—even if the people living there can no longer afford to buy anything. Tinubu will continue to speak of 'vision' and 'patience,' words that cost him nothing and buy the citizens even less. In the long term, according to the gospels of neoliberalism, everything will eventually stabilize. But as Keynes famously noted, in the long run, we are all dead. And dead people, conveniently for the government, do not require subsidies, do not demand food, and—most importantly for the ruling class—do not vote. It is the ultimate fiscal solution: a silent, starving, and eventually absent population, leaving the elites to enjoy the 'stabilized' economy in peace.