Tinubu says powerful interests want him dead over his economic reforms. The CBN's own numbers show the reforms are working. So why isn't anyone celebrating?

At a book launch in Lagos on Wednesday, Olusegun Osoba stood up and delivered a message from the President. Tinubu couldn't make it in person. Osoba's words on his behalf were striking. The oil subsidy and exchange rate cabals are wishing him dead, Osoba said. Those doing forex round-tripping would take him out if they could. He's aware of it. He doesn't care. He's going to rearrange the economy anyway.

It's a dramatic thing to say at a book launch.

But sit with it for a second. Because the economics underneath the rhetoric are real.

When Tinubu took office in May 2023, Nigeria had a fuel subsidy that cost roughly ₦4.4 trillion a year. It had a foreign exchange system with multiple rates that allowed well-connected people to buy dollars cheaply and sell them expensively. Both systems transferred enormous amounts of money from the state and ordinary Nigerians to a small group of people who had access. Removing them was going to hurt somebody.

Three years in, the headline numbers look better. Gross external reserves reached $49.49 billion as of 15 May 2026, up from $48.35 billion at end of March. The naira is trading at around ₦1,380 to the dollar. The gap between the official rate and the parallel market rate has nearly closed. Inflation, which hit 34 per cent in June 2024, has been falling for eight consecutive months.

On paper, that's a turnaround.

Now walk out of the CBN press conference and into a Lagos market.

Petrol is still more expensive than it was before subsidy removal. Transport costs rose and didn't come back down. The naira weakened sharply in 2023 and 2024 before it stabilised, and everything priced in naira absorbed that shock. It didn't unabsorb it when the rate recovered. The family in Ikorodu whose monthly food bill doubled in 2023 is still paying that price, even as the macro indicators recover. The reform worked. The pain didn't leave.

This is what Tinubu's cabal theory doesn't explain. The insecurity isn't only coming from the people he offended. Some of it is coming from the people he was supposed to help.

There's a version of a political leader who removes a corrupt subsidy, takes the pain that comes with it, and then makes the case that it was worth it. That version waits for the numbers to turn before making the case. That version requires the leader to be present at the book launch, not relayed through a proxy. It requires specificity about which Nigerians benefited and when. And it requires an honest account of what the reforms haven't fixed yet.

What you get instead is a warning about people who want him dead. Delivered via an 83-year-old former governor. To a room full of old Afenifere hands. At the launch of a book about NADECO.

The numbers say the worst is probably over. The politics say Tinubu knows he hasn't won the room. Both things can be true at the same time.

The person selling roasted plantain on Ikorodu Road doesn't read CBN reserve figures. She reads her monthly costs. Those two readings have been pointing in different directions for two years now. Until they converge, the cabal story will keep working. It works because it gives the discomfort somewhere to land. Somewhere that isn't the address where the decisions were made.