Atiku Abubakar, Nigeria’s former vice president, is deeply troubled by the World Bank’s verification that 60% of the country’s population lives in poverty.
This is not reform—it is regression on a mammoth scale,” Atiku stated via his spokesperson Pfrank Shaibu, lamenting the fact that “almost 60 percent of Nigerians are now living below the poverty line, up from roughly 40 percent just a few years ago.”
The crisis in Nigeria, he said, is neither inevitable nor an accident.
The sudden elimination of fuel subsidies and the naira’s haphazard devaluation, both carried out without proper protections for the Nigerian people, are directly responsible for this.
Everywhere you look, you can see the results of these policies that were implemented by trial and error: food prices have gone crazy, earnings have been wiped out by inflation, small enterprises have gone under, and millions more Nigerians are sunk into deep poverty.
Nigerians are experiencing a far more difficult reality—one characterised by hunger, uncertainty, and a daily fight for existence—while the Tinubu administration refers to intangible macroeconomic metrics. That is not change. The economically disadvantaged are subjected to a form of shock therapy.
“Interestingly, when a government fails to protect its citizens from the impacts of a global trade war and instead points fingers at others, it reveals its own incompetence.”
The World Bank has recognised the paradox of increasing poverty despite purported changes, which exposes a government that is dangerously removed from its inhabitants’ lived realities, according to the statement.
“When a government claims to be making progress while the majority of its citizens live in poverty, it has lost control of their moral and economic compass.”
One viable option put out by the former VP—”one grounded in experience, pragmatism, and compassion”—was to address the problem. He thinks economic policy should put an emphasis on creating jobs, ensuring food security, and increasing income, and that social protection should be actual, focused, and transparent rather than symbolic.
Restoring confidence and stabilising the economy are the primary goals of the Waziri Adamawa’s strategy, which centers on bolstering small companies, agriculture, and industry in order to increase production.
To be a leader is not to defend mistakes but to make amends when they occur. In the lives of Nigerians, the evidence is already evident,” he said.