The political class must turn economic recovery into food on the table, reliable power, better health, useful learning, and work that pays.
By Emeka Ike
Before sunrise, an ordinary Nigerian is already calculating the day. There is the price of breakfast, the cost of transport and the school expenses that cannot be postponed. The power supply may fail before the children leave home, so money must be found for charging a phone or running a small generator. At the market, the same amount of money buys less food than it did a month ago. At work, a full day may still produce an income that does not cover the household’s needs.
This Nigerian is not asking for a speech about growth. He or she wants to know whether the family will eat properly, whether a sick child can be treated, whether a farmer can reach a secure field, whether a young person can learn a skill and whether electricity will stay on long enough for a small business to operate. The frustration is not abstract. It is felt in the market, at the filling station, in the classroom, at the clinic and in the long hours spent looking for work or waiting for services that should be routine.
To the candidates seeking Nigeria’s presidency in 2027: this is the citizen your manifesto must answer. Make Nigerians happy again—not with a slogan, but with policies that can be measured in the daily life of the household.
The need is urgent even as some national indicators improve. Nigeria’s real gross domestic product grew 4.43 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, up from 3.89 per cent in the first quarter, according to official data reported by Reuters. The Central Bank of Nigeria lists headline inflation at 14.63 per cent in September, down from 15.39 per cent in August, while food inflation stood at 19.59 per cent. The World Bank’s October 2026 brief estimates that 63 per cent of Nigerians lived below the national poverty line in 2026, unchanged from 2025, and cites a World Food Programme estimate that about 35 million people face acute food insecurity this year.
These figures describe the central political problem: the economy may be stabilising, but relief has not reached enough homes. More than 90 per cent of workers are employed informally, according to the World Bank. A low unemployment figure, by itself, cannot tell the story of a worker whose earnings disappear into food, transport, rent, and power.
For political leaders, the lesson is not to abandon reform but to complete it. The difficult measures that restore fiscal and monetary stability must be matched by visible measures that restore public confidence. If citizens are asked to endure adjustment, they must see a credible route from sacrifice to opportunity. The next president will therefore need more than a list of projects: the country needs a governing compact that connects revenue, security, human development, and productive investment.
This is also a political choice about the meaning of growth. A government can report stronger output while households remain exposed to food shocks, weak clinics, interrupted schooling, and costly self-provision of electricity. Or it can make household welfare the test of every major economic decision. MNHA proposes the second course and asks candidates to put that choice plainly before voters.
Promise built around the household
The Make Nigerians Happy Again (MNHA) agenda is offered to every presidential candidate as a practical, non-partisan framework. It asks the next administration to judge success by what people experience, not only by headline growth, tax receipts, or exchange-rate stability. Its five priorities are health, agriculture, power, prosperous jobs, and youth learning, supported by safety and a sound state.
First, health must begin where families meet the state: the primary health centre. Every ward should have a functioning facility, a midwife and community health workers. Maternal and newborn care, immunization, nutrition, and malaria control should receive priority. Public health spending should rise gradually toward the Abuja Declaration benchmark, while the poorest households are connected to health insurance through the Social Registry.
Second, food security requires more than emergency imports. The government should secure farmland and pair that effort with seeds, fertiliser, irrigation, storage, cold chains, and rural roads. Farmers must be able to keep more of what they produce, and consumers must see the benefit in more stable prices. Severe child malnutrition should be treated as an emergency in the worst-affected communities.
Third, power policy must repair the chain from gas to the home and the business. The next government should settle verified arrears, improve transmission and distribution, and use state electricity markets, mini-grids, and solar systems to reach communities outside the national grid. Reliable electricity is not a luxury: it lowers the cost of running a shop, preserving food, studying at night, or operating a workshop.
Fourth, the jobs promise must be about income and productivity. Candidates should commit to vocational and technical training linked to real employers, support small and informal businesses, and investment in agri-processing, cold chains, light manufacturing, and digital services. A published, rule-based review of the minimum wage should be tied to a transparent cost-of-living basket.
Fifth, no country with Nigeria’s young population can afford to leave children out of school. The next government should bring children back to classrooms, focus on reading and mathematics in the early grades, recruit, and pay teachers on time, and keep universities open while protecting research funding. Learning is not merely a social service; it is the foundation of future earnings.
The five priorities are deliberately connected. A farmer cannot benefit fully from improved inputs if insecurity keeps fields closed or poor roads destroy the harvest. A clinic cannot deliver better care when staff lack power and essential supplies. A graduate cannot turn training into income when firms face unreliable electricity and expensive finance. The policy challenge is therefore one of coordination: the presidency must make ministries, states, and private investors work against shared outcomes rather than isolated targets.
That coordination should be led by the centre of government. Each 2031 target should have a named minister, a responsible agency, an annual budget line and a public quarterly report. The president should chair a delivery council that reviews the few indicators that matter most to households, resolves blockages between agencies and publishes corrective actions when targets are missed. Accountability must be designed into the programme, not added after implementation fails.
The conditions for delivery
These promises will fail without safety and capable public finance. Schools and farms must be protected, communities need early-warning systems and responsive policing, and displaced families need help to return and rebuild. Government should publish budget execution every quarter, control interest costs, protect the independence of official statistics and show citizens who is responsible for each target.
The agenda proposes measurable 2031 commitments: poverty below 50 per cent, single-digit inflation, life expectancy of 58 years, under-five mortality of 85 deaths per 1,000 live births, fewer than 20 million people in food crisis, 10,000 megawatts of reliable electricity and fewer children out of school. These are proposals for public debate, not official forecasts. They should be independently costed within 30 days of the new administration taking office, with quarterly progress reports thereafter.
The financing question must be answered before election day, not after it. MNHA proposes three sources of fiscal room: collect more fairly, spend existing revenue better and crowd in private capital where projects can generate a return. A candidate who promises new clinics, power, schools, and jobs should identify the tax measures, savings, state co-funding, and public-private partnerships that will pay for them. The aim is not to hide the trade-offs but to make them politically accountable.
Revenue mobilisation must also be matched by trust. Citizens are more likely to accept difficult reforms when they can see where public money goes, which projects are completed and who benefits. Quarterly budget execution, open procurement information, and independent evaluation should be treated as instruments of economic policy. They reduce waste, protect reform coalitions, and give serious investors a clearer basis for long-term decisions.
A contract with voters
INEC’s current calendar lists the presidential and National Assembly elections for 16 January 2027 and the governorship and State House of Assembly elections for 6 February 2027. The candidates now have the opportunity to make the election more than a contest of personalities. They can tell voters exactly how they will reduce the cost of living, improve public services, and create productive work—and how citizens will check whether those promises are being kept.
One practical measure would be a quarterly Happiness and Cost-of-Living Index published by the National Bureau of Statistics. It could track the price of a basic food basket, electricity hours, school attendance, vaccination, and reported wellbeing. The index would give the Nigerian household a voice in the national economic conversation.
The first 100 days should show that the compact is real. The incoming administration should establish a national cost-of-living council, publish a weekly basket for essential goods, commission an independent costing of the agenda, secure gas supplies to power plants, launch a safe-schools and safe-farms task force, and present a rebalanced supplementary budget.
These are administrative actions, but they carry political meaning: they tell households that the new government understands the pressure they face and has begun to organise the state around it.
Political elites should also be honest about the limits. No president can reduce poverty, insecurity, and infrastructure gaps in one budget cycle. States must co-finance health and education, the private sector must invest where the rules are credible, and citizens must be able to distinguish a target from a guarantee. But limits are not an excuse for vagueness. They are a reason to set priorities, publish milestones and explain what will happen first.
The average Nigerian has carried the cost of adjustment for long enough. The next president should inherit the responsibility of completing the recovery by making it visible in the home.
That is the promise behind Make Nigerians Happy Again: not happiness as celebration, but happiness as the reasonable result of food, health, safety, learning, electricity, and work that gives a family room to breath.
