The Tower Is Rising: Why Tinubu’s Work Deserves to Be Finished… by Ufok Ibekwe

Every generation inherits a nation, but only a few leaders dare to prepare one for the generation that has not yet been born. That is the test of a builder. A politician plans for the next election. A nation builder plans for the next century.

Tinubu is not a messiah. The savior label is politics, and the country has rightly refused it. He is a diligent builder, lifting Nigeria from the precipice toward the Pacific coast of hope, and his boldest policies were written for children who are still in school.

Consider the subsidy. On May 29, 2023, he declared it gone. Presidents had feared that sentence for decades, because it was a fraud that fed on the treasury while the future starved. Trillions of naira once burned in the tanks of the present can now be channeled into roads, classrooms, and clinics. He chose the pain of today so that tomorrow would not inherit the debt.

Consider the exchange rate. A crooked beam holds up nothing. Unifying the naira ended a system where access to cheap dollars was a privilege of the connected. It was a painful correction, but it laid a straight beam for the factories and exporters of the coming decades.

Consider the child at the school gate. The Student Loan Act, signed in June 2023, created NELFUND so that a bright student from a poor home is no longer sentenced by a tuition invoice. This is not charity. It is an investment in engineers, doctors, and founders who will carry Nigeria when this administration is a chapter in a textbook.

Consider the lights. The Electricity Act of 2023 lets states generate and distribute their own power, ending a monopoly that kept whole regions in darkness. A nation cannot industrialize in the dark. Here is a policy that will matter most to people who have never heard of the old grid.

Consider the roads and the fuel. The Lagos to Calabar coastal highway is a concrete spine along the Atlantic, joining ports, markets, and people for generations. The CNG initiative moves transporters toward cleaner and cheaper energy, and the Dangote refinery, producing petrol since 2024, signals an economy that refines its own wealth. The tax reform laws of 2025 replace a thicket of overlapping levies with a clearer rulebook, because investors build on clarity and their children inherit the buildings.

A visionary leader, like an honest engineer, inspects the cracks, not to condemn the structure, but to repair and strengthen it. President Tinubu sees clearly that inflation has pressed hard on Nigerians, especially the poor, and he is committed to reforms that come with cushioning and delivery that matches their daring. For him, every crack is a repair job, a call to renew and rebuild, never a reason to demolish.

So here is why Nigeria should put its faith in Tinubu. Faith in a builder is not worship. It is the reasoned trust we give a man whose foundation is already in the ground, whose pillars are rising, and whose blueprint reaches past his own tenure. He touched what others called untouchable, endured the abuse, and kept building. The savior is a counterfeit and should be refused. The builder is a fact. Let Nigerians trust the hands already on the tower, and one day their grandchildren will look up at a monumental edifice of modern nationhood and say that someone had the courage to build it for them.