Tinubu: Downplaying the pains of Nigeria’s poor?

During the tenure of Adams Oshiomole as governor of Edo State, an unknown joker had placed a cryptic message on a bridge then under construction in that state’s capital city of Benin. The individual had tied a spoon and fork together with a string and hung the contraption on one of the structures with a […]

During the tenure of Adams Oshiomole as governor of Edo State, an unknown joker had placed a cryptic message on a bridge then under construction in that state’s capital city of Benin. The individual had tied a spoon and fork together with a string and hung the contraption on one of the structures with a note on which was written in pidgin English, “Na this we go chop?” Translated into English, it means “Is this what we will eat?” Considering that the message came at a time when the state was engulfed in one of its frequent political turbulences, its import was that the administration should also have prioritised the provision of ‘stomach infrastructure’ (courtesy of Ayo Fayose, former governor of Ekiti State), along with the building of roads and bridges.

The message thereby accentuated the routine mismatch between the perspectives of the country’s political leadership and the aspirations to improvement in quality of life for the citizenry. Pointedly, the message alluded to a situation whereby the Adams Oshiomole administration was more engrossed with physical infrastructural projects while hunger raged across the state. 

 As it was in Edo State under Adams Oshiomole, so it is across the entire country and in particular the present administration of President Bola Tinubu, with a mismatch between the government and the governed defining the basic processes of governance, even as citizens cry out in various ways without being heeded. In that context, several instances in the course of two years in office by President Bola Tinubu have cast a slur on the disposition of his administration as insularly inclined away from Nigeria’s poor. While the administration has been regaling Nigerians and the rest of the world with positive ratings of its ‘sterling’ management of the economy in self-praise, it seems to have left undone what should have been its priority – the welfare of the country’s poor, and rains gall with vehemence at whoever draws its attention to the needful. If nothing else points to this scenario, the indefensibly diametrically opposite position of the Tinubu administration to submissions in the October 2025 World Bank report on Nigeria’s economy is a case in point.

In the cited report, the World Bank acknowledged the modest gains by the Tinubu administration with respect to the redirection of the nation’s economy from its erstwhile ruinous trajectory and conceded an improving growth pace for the economy. Meanwhile, the report was also not silent on the ‘elephant in the room’, which remains the level and pervasiveness of the syndrome of multidimensional poverty across the country. Accordingly, it cited the lack of congruence between the reforms of the administration and the deepening levels of poverty across the land. In specific terms, the World Bank stated that out of about 210 million Nigerians as many as 139 million still live in abject poverty on less than $2.15 or N3,200.00 per day.

This analysis has apparently not gone down well with the administration as it is contesting the stand of the Bretton-Woods global development finance institution. For instance, Tinubu’s spokesman Sunday Dare had in response to the World Bank, argued that the latter’s report was an ‘analytical construct’ that was based on unrealistic premises. He contended that the report on Nigeria’s poverty figure by the Bank was erroneously contextualized, and based on the dollarized global template of $2.15 dollar per day per individual and not based on the actual head count of Nigeria’s multi-dimensionally poor. Dare also conceded, rather in defeat, that the global poverty benchmark of $2.15 is in value even higher than Nigeria’s minimum monthly wage of N70,000.00, which is just less than $50.00 a month. By his argument, Dare had inadvertently aligned himself with the school of thought that holds that Nigeria’s minimum monthly wage of N70,000.00 remains as nothing better than an unjustifiable starvation stipend. 

Meanwhile, placed in perspective the bellyaching by the Tinubu administration over the World Bank report stands in graphic relief as just another instance of its characteristic downplay of the agonies and pains of the country’s teeming poor. It needs to be recalled that a wider cross section of Nigerians are yet to get over his first assault on the poor, being the debilitating impact of the sudden withdrawal of subsidy on petrol, during his inauguration as Nigeria’s president on May 29 2023, without any soft landing for the citizenry.  It has been two years after that draconian dispensation, with Nigerians taking its impact in their stride. It is also easily recalled how, during the minimum wage debate, President Bola Tinubu literally steamrolled labour and other negotiators into accepting the questionable N70,000.00 per month minimum wage dispensation with his questionable argument of unsustainability of a higher figure by the economy.

Beyond the foregoing, can also be recalled how the administration spiritedly debunked the submission by the African Development Bank through its immediate past President Akinwumi Adesina, that Nigerians were better off in 1960 than in 2025 under the present administration.  Yet, not to be forgotten was the official excoriation of the frontline Daily Trust newspaper stable over its editorial comment that Nigerians were hungry. 

Repeat: First published October 11, 2025