By Adeola Akinremi
If there were credible national opinion polls in Nigeria, four months and nineteen days before the presidential election, we would have a clearer picture of where President Bola Tinubu and the other contenders stand.
We do not.
And so we are left with something less precise but perhaps more revealing: the record.
Without serious polling, it seems to me that Tinubu is driven more by mission than by ambition. That distinction matters.
His aggressive economic policies may make him intelligible to those who understand the macroeconomic necessity, but unbearable to those bearing the microeconomic pain, although temporarily. The pain of reform often dulls its immediate prosperity, making it hard for people to see the gains, especially in a political firmament where opponents with nothing concrete to offer try to confuse citizens with illogical arguments and reasoning.
As Reuters recently wrote, “few Nigerian presidents have moved as quickly on economic policy as Tinubu.”
Yet, history offers a reminder: In March 2012, I made a business trip to Singapore. My trip allowed me to learn directly from the people on the ground what I have read in “From Third World to First”, a book authored by Singapore’s revolutionary Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
Singapore’s transformation shows how today’s economic discipline can become tomorrow’s prosperity.
Singapore was not Nigeria. It had a tiny population, a strategic port, unusually strong state capacity, and exceptional continuity in economic policy. When Lee Kuan Yew’s government began transforming the country’s transformation, it was dealing with poverty, unemployment, and a poorly educated workforce. But its government deliberately pursued industrialization, attracted foreign investment, built infrastructure, and invested in human capital. By the early 1970s, the unemployment problem had largely been solved, and the country subsequently moved toward higher-skill and higher-technology industries.
Tinubu’s real revolution is quiet. Beneath the noise of politics and headlines, what started as a policy memo is now drawing the world’s attention.
International businesses and governments are paying attention, not because of slogans, but because of Nigeria’s growing appetite to use technology to squeeze more productivity from the same tired systems to open new possibilities, and to raise the quality of what this country produces.
Here is the paradox. The International Trade Administration, the U.S. Department of Commerce agency responsible for promoting American exports, is looking at Nigeria and encouraging American businesses to explore its emerging technology opportunities. The Americans are looking toward Nigeria. Some of Nigeria’s opposition politicians are asking Nigerians to look away.
To be honest, Tinubu’s quiet tech revolution is easy to underestimate. But it is not going unnoticed. Washington sees a market worth entering. Washington is watching and aligning its interests.
In 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce and Nigeria’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment signed a Commercial and Investment Partnership focused on agriculture, the digital economy, and infrastructure. At the same time, Washington released a joint statement on harnessing artificial intelligence with Nigeria’s Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy. Later that year, Lagos hosted the second-ever U.S. Global Inclusivity on Artificial Intelligence: Africa conference, bringing ten U.S. government agencies and 400 pan-African stakeholders to the table.
This is not ceremonial. The United States already counts Nigeria among its top 55 trade partners, with two-way trade at $11.2 billion in 2023. And in a country where oil’s contribution to GDP has shrunk to 5.7 percent, the digital economy now accounts for nearly 20 percent of output in a single quarter, almost four times what oil contributes. When a superpower starts staging AI conferences in Lagos and signing joint statements on digital governance, it is not tourism. It is strategy.
Europe is moving in the same direction. The European Union has announced a €290 million investment package for Nigeria under its Global Gateway strategy, with the largest share—€131 million—dedicated to expanding fibre-optic networks to reach millions currently without stable internet. A separate €45 million EU Digital Economy Package targets secure connectivity, digital public infrastructure, e-governance, digital entrepreneurship, and advanced skills, explicitly tying into Nigeria’s 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme.
The message is blunt: Europe sees Nigeria not just as an energy supplier, but as a future digital and manufacturing hub for West Africa. More than a quarter of Nigeria’s trade is with the EU, over 200 European companies operate here, and Brussels is betting that digital rails will make those ties deeper, not thinner.
The United Kingdom, for its part, has deepened engagement through a £15 million growth programme aimed at investment and the digital economy, even as bilateral trade with Nigeria climbs toward £7.2 billion. Canada’s Africa strategy emphasises economic cooperation, youth empowerment, and digital skills, with high-level trade missions and new instruments to mobilise finance for technology and infrastructure. In diplomatic terms, this is what alignment looks like: multiple capitals, same conclusion.
None of this erases the daily struggle, which other nations equally faced.
What am I saying, to reduce Nigeria’s story to only pain is to miss the big picture: a country that, despite everything, is becoming one of the most important digital markets on the continent.
Nigeria already leads Africa’s ICT market, contributing 82 percent of the continent’s ICT value and 29 percent of its internet usage. More than 210 million mobile subscribers. Broadband penetration is above 40 percent. 5G licences awarded and rolled out in major cities. A fintech ecosystem that moves hundreds of billions of dollars in payments every year. This is not a “potential” market. It is a live, breathing digital economy with real users, real transactions, and real stakes.
The reforms are expensive. They are politically risky. They are also necessary. A country of over 220 million people cannot build a twenty-first-century economy on twentieth-century infrastructure and nineteenth-century bureaucracy. Digital transformation will not fix every broken thing, but it can make everything else work better: tax collection, service delivery, financial inclusion, education, health, even anti-corruption efforts when systems are designed to leave fewer shadows.
Still, there is a danger in the way this story is told. Too often, “digital economy” becomes a euphemism for apps and startups, as if the point is to produce a few billionaire founders while the rest of the country watches. That is not the ambition here. The ambition is to change how work gets done, how value gets created, and how ordinary Nigerians plug into global markets without having to leave their postcodes.
The 3MTT programme, the broadband push, the data protection regime, and the emerging AI strategy are not vanity projects. They are attempts to lay the rails for a different kind of growth. One that does not depend solely on oil prices or the mood swings of global commodity markets. One that can absorb a youthful population instead of spitting them out as statistics.
Yes, the cost of reforms is an enduring issue. But the cost of stagnation is higher. The world is not waiting for a perfect Nigeria. It is engaging with the real one: messy, complicated, stubbornly alive. The question is whether Nigerians, especially those with the power to shape policy and capital, will match that external interest with internal conviction.
Optimism is not denial. It is a decision. A decision to see the quiet tech revolution for what it is: not a distraction from “real” development, but one of the few credible paths to it. The world has taken its position. The memo has become a movement. The only thing left to decide is whether Nigeria will fully inhabit the opportunity Tinubu has created.
*Adeola Akinremi is a public policy advisor, strategic communications expert, and the founder and CEO of Hintells, an AI-powered intelligence platform serving businesses and African diplomatic missions in Washington, D.C. He has extensive multilateral experience advising on governance, economic and policy reforms across global markets and can be reached at: adeola@hintells.com
