AfDB President On Nigeria’s GDP: Stop Living In Denial – HURIWA Tells Tinubu

Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has declared that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is actively living in denial by pretending to be unaware that hundreds of thousands of Nigerians are chocking, starving and dying from absolute poverty induced hardships.

HURIWA which stated this while tasking President Tinubu to stop berating the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina over his analogy of the Nigerians’ poverty situation when compared to the 1960s, berated the Nigerian leader for introducing partisan politics into everything being discussed about the Nigerian situation even when those views are from such politically unbiased and unattached personalities and institutions such as the President of the AfDB, Dr. Akinwunmi Adeshina, the World Bank or International Monetary Fund.

The rights group said that if Tinubu pretends to be asleep and unaware of the realities on the ground, then he needs to also read up the current report by the World Bank on the growing phenomenon of rural poverty.

HURIWA noted that the President of the AfDB, Dr Adesina, had warned that Nigeria is facing a deeper economic regression than many realise, stating that with a current GDP per capita of just $824, Nigerians are significantly worse off than they were at independence in 1960.

Adesina stated these last Thursday while presenting a keynote address at the 20th anniversary dinner of investment firm Chapel Hill Denham in Lagos during which he stressed the need for Nigeria to radically transform its economic model to become a globally competitive and industrialised nation by 2050.

HURIWA in a statement by Emmanuel Onwubiko, National Coordinator, said that rather than reflect on the lessons embedded in the factual statement by one of the finest brains, the presidency decided to sound childish by picking holes on the statement by Dr Adesina.

HURIWA stressed that the clever-by-half resort to politically twisted and highly doubtful GDP statistical data churned out by paid agencies with which Bayo Onanuga thinks he can deceive gullible Nigerians to believe that we are better off than our parents were in the 1960s. This statement by Onanuga is farther from the truth is most appalling.

According to HURIWA; “Only someone who is bereft of knowledge of social studies and history wouldn’t know that in the 1960s, citizens of Nigeria were not killed and that economic activities by common citizens were uninterrupted by bandits, terrorists and kidnappers that are now having a field day”.

HURIWA noted that World Bank backed the same sentiments echoed by Dr. Adesina when the Brettonwood institution recently raised a fresh concern over the rising poverty in Nigeria, saying that a staggering 75.5 per cent of rural dwellers live below the poverty line as contained in the World Bank April 2025 Poverty and Equity Brief for Nigeria.

HURIWA said that the World Bank, in its latest brief for Nigeria, painted a gloomy picture of the state of poverty in the country, following worsening economic hardship and inequality among the rural dwellers.

It said; “According to the report, while 41.3 per cent of Nigeria’s urban population lives in poverty; the situation is significantly worse in rural areas where economic stagnation, inflation and insecurity have combined to deepen hardship.

“Based on the most recent official household survey data from Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, 30.9 per cent of Nigerians lived below the international extreme poverty line of $2.15 per person per day in 2018/19 before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Nigeria remains spatially unequal. The poverty rate in northern geopolitical zones was 46.5 per cent in 2018/19, compared with 13.5 per cent for southern ones. Inequality measured by the Gini index was estimated at 35.1 in 2018/19,” it said.

HURIWA said everyone who has the gift of discernment and wisdom, must know that the 1960s Nigeria wasn’t as bad as we are currently even from the angles of corruption and bad governance, dictatorial leadership which is worse now than ever before even as the deliberately orchestrated bad governance practices of virtually all past civilian administrations since 1999 aside those of Obasanjo, has induced the heightened state of insecurity across Nigeria just as insecurity festers and multiply hunger and poverty.

It further said the Nigerian currency in the 1960s was far better in value than dollars and pounds sterling but currently President Tinubu devalued the Naira and has made the Naira the most worthless currency in the World.

HURIWA also said governments in the 1960s ensured that educational institutions, health institutions were in place and in good conditions just as built roads were regularly maintained while scholarship schemes were liberally offered to the citizens and jobs were easier to get than now.

“So, why is Bayo Onanuga disputing the views of Akinwumi Adesina who is one of our very best in terms of knowledge economics?,” HURIWA asked.