The Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Tanimu Yakubu, has said that Tinubunomics was never designed as a promise of immediate prosperity but as a difficult and deliberate macro-fiscal reset carried out under tight constraints. Yakubu made the clarification in a policy note titled Tinubunomics and the Arithmetic of Illusion, where he warned against what he described as misleading public narratives built on inflated headline figures rather than sound public finance principles. According to him, much of the criticism directed at the fiscal framework of Bola Ahmed Tinubu stems from a failure to distinguish between revenue, cash and financing, as well as between federation-wide collections and what the Federal Government actually retains and can spend. Tinubunomics was never a promise of instant abundance. It is a macro-fiscal reset undertaken within hard constraints: inherited debt service, FX realism, security spending, legacy arrears, and competing constitutional obligations, Yakubu said. He dismissed viral claims suggesting the Federal Government had access to 150 trillion or more, describing them as products of arithmetic illusion rather than economic analysis. Borrowing is not income; it is financing and creates future obligations. Federation receipts are not equivalent to what the Federal Government can spend. Once these distinctions are ignored, any number, no matter how dramatic, can be manufactured, he explained. Yakubu noted that critics often lump together tax collections and oil revenues without clarifying whether the figures are gross or net, federation-wide or federally retained, or whether deductions and costs have been accounted for. He added that customs receipts are frequently double-counted, while borrowing is portrayed as though it were free money. On fuel subsidy removal, the Budget Office boss stressed that the reform did not generate a sudden pool of spendable cash. Subsidy reform does not conjure discretionary cash. It closes a hole. Under the old regime, underpricing manifested through arrears, opaque netting, and quasi-fiscal obligations. Reform first eliminates these hidden drains. The fiscal benefit appears gradually, not through a sudden pile of spendable savings, he said. Yakubu also addressed concerns about Nigerias rising debt stock, explaining that much of the increase in naira terms resulted from exchange-rate revaluation of existing foreign-currency debt rather than new borrowing. When the exchange rate adjusts, the naira value of dollar-denominated debt rises automatically, he said, describing attempts to label this as fresh borrowing as a category error. He emphasised that in a federal system, revenues are shared and statutorily allocated, and that the true federal budget position is determined by retained revenue plus deficit financing, not by gross inflows aggregated for political effect. Calling for more informed public scrutiny, Yakubu urged Nigerians to assess government performance using proper audit logic rather than sensational figures. Anything else is not scrutiny. It is a theatre. And no amount of theatrical arithmetic can substitute for fiscal discipline, he said..
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