Imo State Governor and Chairman of the Progressive Governors’ Forum, Hope Uzodimma, has told the diplomatic corps in Nigeria that President Bola Tinubu’s reforms have moved the country from “foundational repair” to visible economic recovery, and urged foreign governments and investors to align with the new trajectory.
Speaking at the launch of the Renewed Hope Ambassadors’ engagement with diplomats in Abuja on 10 May 2026, Uzodimma said the two flagship decisions of May 2023 – the removal of the petrol subsidy and the floating of the naira – were the hinge on which the administration’s policy direction now turns.
“For decades, the petroleum subsidy regime functioned as the single largest organised corruption pipeline in our public finances,” Uzodimma said. “Removing the subsidy did not reduce that corruption by some incremental margin. It eliminated the channel itself.”
He said the freed resources had expanded the Federation Account, with monthly disbursements to states rising to between ₦700bn and ₦800bn. February 2026 allocations to states reached ₦784bn, a 23% increase year-on-year. “The era of state governors travelling to Abuja for emergency bailouts to pay basic salaries is over,” he said.
At the federal level, Uzodimma pointed to a scale of infrastructure delivery he said Nigeria had not seen in a single administration. He cited the 700km Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, with the first 47km temporarily opened in December 2025, and the 1,068km Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway, where Section 2A in Kebbi is 40% complete. Over 440 road projects and 2,700km of superhighways are ongoing nationwide.
He also highlighted macroeconomic gains from the naira float. Foreign reserves rose from $32bn in mid-2024 to $49.4bn at end-March 2026, providing 13 months of import cover. The naira closed April at ₦1,374/$ in the official market, with the gap to the parallel rate narrowing to under 2%. Diaspora remittances averaged $600m monthly, up from $200m in 2023. Fitch and Moody’s upgraded Nigeria’s ratings in 2025 and 2026, and the NGX All-Share Index rose 55.7% year-to-date to 242,277 points in April.
Uzodimma said inflation had fallen from a peak above 27% in 2023 to 15.06% in February 2026, before edging to 15.38% in March due to global oil shocks. Real GDP grew 4.07% in Q4 2025 and 3.87% for the full year, with the IMF projecting 4.1% growth for 2026.
He outlined social and institutional reforms, including the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, which has disbursed ₦242.4bn to 1.388m students, and tax reforms that exempt workers earning up to ₦800,000 annually and small businesses below ₦100m turnover. He also noted progress on state policing, with a constitutional alteration bill before the National Assembly.
Addressing global headwinds from Middle East tensions and the Strait of Hormuz disruption, Uzodimma said Nigeria had “absorbed the shock with the macroeconomic shock absorbers that this administration’s reforms put in place.”
As Director-General of the Renewed Hope Ambassadors, Uzodimma said his role was to ensure federal progress is matched by delivery at the state level. “The conditions for entering into partnerships with Nigeria have not been this favourable in decades,” he told the diplomats.
EU Ambassador to Nigeria Gautier Mignot, who also spoke at the event, said governors were key partners for international cooperation and praised the engagement. “Governors are political actors closer to the people, and when it comes to address challenges so complex as insecurity, poverty and humanitarian needs, power supply, women and girls employment, they are closer to these issues and can sometimes provide more efficient responses,” he said.
The address was delivered before Minister of Foreign Affairs Ambassador Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu and other envoys accredited to Nigeria.
