Enimere Àkànbí
It is baffling and, frankly, tragic that, in 2025, a few disgruntled Nigerians who should know better still parrot the empty slogan, “take us back to where the naira was before Tinubu came in”These are misguided nostalgists longing for what never truly existed, a make-believe “Naira Egypt” where illusion was sold as stability, and deception wore the mask of progress. What they mourn is not a lost paradise, but a grand monetary scam that bled the nation dry.
They are the same voices that once benefited from a fraudulent and unsustainable monetary illusion, an economy propped up by deceit and distortion. What they long for is not prosperity, but the comfort of deception. They yearn for Egypt, a land of bondage dressed as abundance, where the naira was artificially valued, and corruption thrived behind the curtain of subsidy manipulations.
Lest we forget, before President Bola Tinubu GCFR, took over the reins of power, the dollar, like fuel, was heavily subsidised. The Central Bank, under dodgy Godwin Emefiele and his cronies, used scarce national reserves to cover the difference between the real market value of the dollar and the official rate that Nigerians were allowed to see.
If the global value were ₦1,500, they would peg it at ₦400 and quietly pay the remaining ₦1,100 from the nation’s coffers. The result? A fake exchange rate that created overnight billionaires who feasted on arbitrage, buying cheap dollars from the CBN and reselling at black-market rates. It was a criminal paradise disguised as policy.
Those who now cry for a return to “Naira Egypt”do not know, and worse, they refuse to learn. They forget that this deceptive subsidy drained our reserves, hollowed out our foreign exchange market, and crippled honest enterprise. President Tinubu could have kicked the can down the road like his predecessors, but he didn’t. He chose the more challenging path: to confront Nigeria’s economic distortions head-on. The Renewed Hope administration is laying a foundation built on truth, transparency, and long-term sustainability, not on lies designed to please the impatient.
Today, for the first time in decades, the naira reflects its real market value. The economy is being cleansed of artificial props. Our reserves are climbing, now above $42 billion. Access to foreign exchange has improved; Nigerians can now use their naira debit cards abroad without stress. Export sectors are reviving, driven by initiatives like the Dangote Refinery, which boosts forex earnings through local sales and exports. Even the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank and IMF, now commend Nigeria for the courage to implement structural reforms others merely theorised about.
To the “take us back to Egypt”chorus: hear this truth, there is no future in falsehood. The old system you romanticise was a trap, not a triumph. Egypt was never the Promised Land; it was a place of slavery, corruption, and deceit. Nigeria is finally walking toward economic freedom, and though the journey is tough, the destination is worth it. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s bold reforms are the compass of a nation determined to heal, rebuild, and prosper, not to return to bondage.
May Nigeria’s Naira never go back to Egypt, and may the Renewed Hope agenda continue to lead us forward.
By Hon Victor Okebunmi
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