President Bola Tinubu has alleged that powerful interests threatened by his administration’s removal of fuel subsidies and unification of foreign exchange markets are actively working to destabilize the country, including through the fueling of insecurity, and has pledged that he will not retreat from his economic reform program regardless of the pressure applied.

The president’s position was communicated through former Ogun State Governor Olusegun Osoba, who represented him at the Lagos launch of The NADECO Story, a publication chronicling the pro-democracy struggle against military rule and the campaign to honour the mandate of the late Chief Moshood Abiola, the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election.

Osoba said the administration’s economic reforms had disrupted entrenched interests that previously benefited from fuel subsidy payments and multiple foreign exchange windows. He said the president was determined to ensure that a properly restructured economy would stand as his legacy, and that he had identified the economy and national security as the two central priorities of his administration.

On the foreign exchange front, Osoba cited progress in narrowing the gap between the official and parallel market rates, noting that a differential that once reached nearly 2,000 naira per dollar had contracted to approximately 1,380 naira. He acknowledged that insecurity, which had previously been concentrated in northern regions, was showing signs of spreading toward the South-west.

Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, who chaired the occasion, made a striking disclosure about the late pro-democracy activist Beko Ransome-Kuti, revealing that Beko had arrived in Paris during the NADECO period armed and declaring his intention to assassinate former military ruler Sani Abacha. Soyinka said he had intervened and confiscated the weapon, and described the incident as an illustration of the intensity and personal sacrifice that defined the pro-democracy movement.

Soyinka praised The NADECO Story as a credible historical account that pushes back against distortions of Nigeria’s political history, calling for greater recognition of lesser-known contributors to the pro-democracy struggle who have not received the acknowledgement their sacrifices merited.