Promise Adiele
Over the years, the semantic integrity of many English words has suffered various degrees of harm in the hands of different people worldwide, especially in Nigeria. Many times, the linguistic and literary community is embarrassed by the way some people negate the meaning of innocuous English words to either score a cheap political point or delude the army of ill-informed, gullible people, leading them astray into a dark alley. When the uneducated among us mindlessly mutilate English words, either by pronunciation or malapropism, the enlightened public overlooks such an infraction as happenstance. However, it borders on a tragedy of an elevated status when otherwise educated persons wilfully desecrate the temple of lexical categories in their pursuit of illusory, self-serving objectives. Oftentimes, such perfidious behaviour plunges a whole country into irredeemable error. Many times, too, someone on a propaganda mission can hide under linguistic and semantic subversion to subtly present a façade. It does not matter the academic qualifications or social standing of such people. They stand on a privileged pedestal to hoodwink the populace, especially in a country where millions of citizens are hardly concerned with the rigour of research.
Recently, Nigeria’s former Finance Minister and current Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, submitted that Nigeria’s president, Mr. Bola Tinubu, should be praised for ‘stabilizing’ the country’s economy. Her submission raised eyebrows across the country, given that the economic policies of the government have initiated millions of Nigerians into the poverty clan, while many households are caught in the whirlwind of economic uncertainties. Needless to say that under the present government, Nigerians have come face-to-face with suffering and hardship of unimaginable proportions. While prices of goods and services have soared beyond the reach of ordinary people, inflation continues to fluctuate, successfully eliminating the middle class. The exchange rate of the dollar to the naira has also astronomically doubled, and as a result, the naira is almost worthless. Given these evident realities, the informed mind wonders how the erudite economist came about using the word ‘stabilize’ to describe the Nigerian nosediving economy. Every economic index indicates that the Nigerian economy was better prior to 2023, before the current administration mounted the pulpit to preach discordant, incoherent economic doctrines that threaten to decimate the common people.
Let us, responsibly, examine the meaning of the word ‘stabilize’. ‘Stabilize’ is a verb which means to steady something in a way that it would not decline, get worse or fail beyond its original state. Therefore, ‘stabilize’ in the context that the DG of the World Trade Centre used it is inappropriate, ambiguous, and inconsistent with prevailing economic realities in Nigeria. The Nigerian economy was far better before Tinubu came to power. Currently, the economy is furiously heading to some sort of precipice, a slippery slope leading the country to guaranteed perdition. So is Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala mocking Nigerians by saying that a man who took bread out of their mouths and replaced it with stone should be praised for ‘stabilizing’ hardship and suffering in the country? It becomes more annoying when we compare the profligate attitude of government officials to the meagre, excruciating living conditions of ordinary people.
Okonjo-Iweala betrayed a lack of knowledge of the Nigerian situation since 2023. Perhaps her analysis may have derived from media propaganda, which bears no direct correlation with the lives of the masses. In 2023, Nigeria’s public debt was N87.91 trillion, while in 2025, under Tinubu, the country’s public debt is N149.39 trillion. In 2023, a 3-bedroom apartment in the outskirts of major Nigerian cities cost between 500,000 naira and 800,000 naira per annum. Today, under Tinubu, the same apartments in the same areas cost between 2 million to 4 million naira. Before 2023, a 2006-2008 foreign used Toyota Corolla car cost between 1.5 million naira to 2 million naira. In 2025, the same car costs between 9 million naira to 12 million naira. It is the same situation with other categories of cars. What about the prices of milk, beverages, rice, yams, bread, cooking gas, electricity, and sundry food and household items? Transportation fares are abominable. School fees have hit the roof, too. Is that how to stabilize a country’s economy? Maybe ‘stabilize’ has acquired another meaning that most of us do not know. To put it mildly, Tinubu and his APC gang have retarded the Nigerian economy. They should be called out and not praised.
Today, across Nigeria, salaries can hardly support families, and many businesses are folding due to the high cost of running a business in the country. While the people wallow in anguish, the political class, friends, and accolades of the government are frolicking in ostentation and open display of materiality. The inexplicable approval of 712 billion naira for the renovation of the Lagos airport grates on the frontiers of equitable conscience. In 2012, the FG earmarked N106 billion to renovate the same airport and it was commissioned in 2022 by the Buhari administration. Three years later, the same airport requires 712 billion naira for renovation. Does this government take Nigerians to be fools? If Tinubu has ridden the country into a rough terrain and then, all by himself, maintained a steady course inside the rough terrain, does he deserve to be praised? Of course, we would all praise him if the economy were better and the living conditions of the people, demonstrably proved by the purchasing power of the currency, were better as well.
Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Ma’am, Tinubu did not stabilize the economy, he plunged it into chaos, leading Nigerians into economic misery. Perhaps you could say that the current government has stabilized poverty and suffering. In that case, it simply means that you indulged in malapropism, a case of using ‘stabilize’ in a mistaken way, substituting it with ‘destroy’. No doubt Okonjo-Iweala is a world-class economic guru, but I recall that the same APC stalwarts now praising her for malapropism were the same people who called her a failed economist when she was a minister under former president Goodluck Jonathan. That is the way of politics. While we may applaud Okonjo-Iweala’s achievements as a globally recognized development economist, she is nowhere near the community of linguistic or literary experts who deploy words appropriately. Even so, ‘economic stability’ is a phrase Okonjo-Iweala should be familiar with, but her use of it to describe Nigeria’s current economy borders on a redefinition, which puts a huge question mark on her intentions. I recall she also urged the president to ‘grow the economy’ so that poor people would have more money in their pockets. Does the current government have the capacity to grow the Nigerian economy with the prevailing culture of wasteful spending?
Any fair-minded person knows that the current government is only interested in growing the economic interests of the political class and not in the benefit of the common people. There are reports that the Federal Government of Nigeria is proposing to increase the salaries and allowances of political office holders. So while those who are already crippled by surplus would have their salaries and allowances increased, many Nigerian workers will continue to be devastated by need and insufficient remuneration. It is this kind of bleeding perversion that has defined the Tinubu era because his policies gravitate towards empowering the rich political class, those who would be directly loyal to him, to ensure that he gets away with blue murder in all variations. Students of politics and Political Scientists would do us a huge favour to nominate a proper nomenclature for the government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. Could this be what our renowned economist and former Finance Minister called ‘stabilizing the economy’?
Politics aside, Nigerians are fully aware that the economic statistics that assess the Tinubu government positively are manipulated. It confounds every iota of reason that anyone would say the Nigerian economy is in the right direction. I ask simple questions – how is the Nigerian economy in the right direction when people are suffering with a shrinking purchasing power? How is the Nigerian economy ‘stable’ when millions of families can barely make ends meet? What are the concrete indications that Nigerians are better now than they were before the current government came to power? Tinubu hit the streets to protest when Goodluck Jonathan marginally removed fuel subsidy. Today, his cheerleaders are praising him for removing the same fuel subsidy. Surely, Nigeria’s economy is in dire need of revival, never mind all the propaganda from different local and global bodies to the contrary. I have always maintained that the improvement and progress of any economy should be gauged by the standard of living of the common people. Any economic progress that does not reflect on the streets and lives of the people is bogus, insincere and an infantile lie that must be rejected by reason. The suffering people of Nigeria may be denied and deprived, but we surely know the meaning of ‘stabilize’ and ‘economic stability’.
Promise Adiele PhD
Mountain Top University
Promee01@yahoo.com
X: @drpee4
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