Nigeria’s new president acts fast

During his inaugural speech on May 29th in Abuja, the capital, President Bola Tinubu shocked and delighted reform-minded Nigerians by veering off-script to announce an end to subsidising petroleum products, which for decades has drained the treasury of revenues from the country’s most valuable natural resource. Since then, he has continued to shake the establishment with a string of night-time press statements which heralded the firing of his central-bank governor, the top brass of the army and the heads of several key government agencies, including the police, the customs service and the financial-crimes commission.His biggest scalp was that of the central banker, Godwin Emefiele, whom the secret police detained—so far without charge—on June 9th. Mr Tinubu explained that “the financial system [had been] rotten” under the supervision of Mr Emefiele, who had held the job for the past nine years.