Nigeria, Aug. 29 -- If there were credible national opinion polls in Nigeria, four months and nineteen days before the presidential election, we would have a clearer picture of where President Bola Tinubu and the other contenders stand.

We do not.

And so we are left with something less precise but perhaps more revealing: the record.

Without serious polling, it seems to me that Tinubu is driven more by mission than by ambition. That distinction matters.

His aggressive economic policies may make him intelligible to those who understand the macroeconomic necessity, but unbearable to those bearing the microeconomic pain, although temporarily. The pain of reform often dulls its immediate prosperity, making it hard for people to see the gai...