Every elected president since 1999 has promised mass job creation, from Obasanjo's NEEDS agenda to Tinubu's pledge of 50 million jobs. By the government's own measure, unemployment rose from about 10% in 2015 to 33% by the end of Buhari's term.

Since the 1999 return to civilian rule, every elected president has campaigned on fixing the power supply — and, before them, the military governments that built the dams and the national grid. On-grid generation has still never held above about 5,500 MW for a country of more than 200 million people.

Nigeria's elections went from widely condemned in 2007 to broadly credible by 2011, then to BVAS-backed reform by 2023 — judged imperfect at every step, but on an improving trajectory that few other recurring promises in this tracker can claim.

Reducing Nigeria's dependence on crude oil for its exports and its government revenue has been a stated goal of every administration since the boom of the 1970s. Oil still earns the large majority of the country's foreign exchange.

Every president from Obasanjo to Buhari inherited the fight over the oil-producing Niger Delta. Escalating violence under Obasanjo gave way to Yar'Adua's 2009 amnesty — widely seen as the single most successful policy of his term — and two administrations since have worked to sustain it without ever finishing the region's promised clean-up and development.

The Boko Haram insurgency has outlasted three elected commanders-in-chief. Each took office promising to end it — often within months — and each handed it on.

From Murtala Mohammed's purges of the public service to Buhari's “change begins with me”, promising to fight corruption is the one pledge nearly every Nigerian leader has made. The country's standing on international corruption indices has barely moved.

Between 1966 and 1999, every military government in Nigeria promised, at some point, to hand power back to an elected civilian government. Three delivered a genuine, on-schedule handover. Three did not — including one annulled election and one self-succession plan that ended only with the ruler's death in office.

Rebalancing power between Abuja and the states — creating states, fiscal federalism, devolved policing, a new constitution — recurs in nearly every era, military and civilian alike. Beyond the creation of states under military rule, structural change has been rare.