The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has urged the Federal Government to sustain Nigeria’s economic reforms but shift its focus from macroeconomic stabilisation to productivity, job creation and improved living standards.
The group said reversing the reforms would undermine investor confidence, weaken fiscal stability and destabilise the foreign exchange market.
In a statement issued on Sunday and signed by Dr Muda Yusuf, its Chief Executive Officer, CPPE said the reform programme should remain on course but its implementation must be continuously reviewed and adjusted in response to emerging realities.
“CPPE believes that reversing the reforms would be profoundly damaging to the economy,” the organisation said.
According to the group, abandoning the reforms could reintroduce economic distortions that the measures were designed to address while creating uncertainty for investors and businesses.
However, CPPE stressed that sustaining the reforms should not mean maintaining policies rigidly where evidence shows that they are imposing excessive pressure on businesses and households.
It called for the reform instruments to be recalibrated based on implementation experience and their impact on the wider economy.
CPPE said Nigeria had reached a point where the government must move beyond improving headline macroeconomic indicators and focus more directly on the welfare of citizens.
“The next phase must move decisively from stabilisation to productivity; from higher government revenues to better development outcomes; and from improving macroeconomic indicators to tangible gains in jobs, incomes and living standards,” it said.
The organisation’s position comes amid concerns over how much of the fiscal space generated by the reforms has been absorbed by government expenditure and debt servicing.
According to the Federal Government’s Nigeria’s Reform Scorecard: The Benefits, Costs and Harms Prevented, Nigeria incurred N10.61 trillion in additional debt-service costs between June 2023 and December 2025.
The figure was about N4.14 trillion higher than the N6.47 trillion allocated to strategic infrastructure during the same period.
The scorecard put total incremental Federal Government expenditure during the period at N30.64 trillion.
Wage adjustments accounted for N9.39 trillion, while external debt servicing stood at N9.37 trillion. Strategic infrastructure received N6.47 trillion, electricity subsidies accounted for N3.14 trillion, domestic debt servicing took N1.24 trillion, while social welfare transfers stood at N423.80 billion.
Combined external and domestic debt servicing therefore accounted for about 34.6% of the government’s incremental expenditure, making it the largest expenditure component.
The figures highlight some of the fiscal pressures associated with the reform programme, including the effects of naira depreciation following foreign exchange reforms and higher interest rates resulting from monetary tightening.
The Federal Government has continued to defend the reforms as necessary measures that created fiscal space and prevented a deeper deterioration in the country’s finances.
The government said it borrowed N11.9 trillion between June 2023 and December 2025, while Finance Minister Taiwo Oyedele said the country’s incremental resources from subsidy savings, independent revenue and borrowing totalled N20.4 trillion during the period.
Oyedele said the additional resources helped finance N30.64 trillion in incremental Federal Government expenditure.
For CPPE, however, the central challenge now is ensuring that the gains from economic stabilisation translate into stronger productive activity, more jobs, higher incomes and better living standards.
The group therefore urged the government to preserve the reform direction while making necessary adjustments to ensure that economic policies deliver tangible benefits to businesses, households and the broader Nigerian economy.
