The Presidency has disagreed with the statement by outgoing AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina that Nigerians today are worse off than in 1960, saying that he speaks like a politician, ” who did not do due diligence before making his unverifiable statement.”
Adesina recently said that Nigeria’s GDP per capita in 1960 was $1847 and that it is $824 today, implying that Nigerians are worse off 85 years ago.
Adesina made these remarks in a statement issued last Thursday following his keynote address at the 20th anniversary dinner of investment firm Chapel Hill Denham in Lagos.
He stressed the need for “Nigeria to radically transform its economic model to become a globally competitive and industrialised nation by 2050.”
Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga said on Sunday that the quoted figures are not correct.
He said that available data shows that ” our country’s GDP was $4.2 billion in 1960, and per capita income for a population of 44.9 million was $93, not even one hundred dollars.
“Our country’s GDP did not rise remarkably until the 1970s, when crude earnings ballooned. In 1970, our GDP rose to $12.55 billion. In 1975, it was $27.7 billion, $64.2 billion in 1980, and $164 billion in 1981. Up until 1980, per capita income did not exceed $880. It rose to $2187 in 1981 and dropped to $1844 in 1982. In 2014, after rebasing, it reached an all-time high of $3,200.”
These facts raise questions about the source of Dr Adesina’s figures, said the presidential spokesperson.
Onanuga said Dr Adesina should know that GDP per capita is not the only criterion used to determine whether people live better lives now than in the past, arguing that it is a poor tool for assessing living standards.
“Its primary usefulness is in giving us the metrics to compare economic output in a country or between countries.
“GDP masks many activities in a country’s economy. It neither discloses wealth distribution or income inequality nor accounts for the informal economy, which experts have said is enormous. It does not account for subsistence farming or income transfer from one family member to another.
“GDP per capita is silent on whether Nigerians in 2025 enjoy better access to healthcare, education, and transportation, such as rail and air transport, than in 1960,” Onanuga said.
He further said that compared with 1960, Nigeria today has more primary, secondary, and tertiary schools, more road networks and more medical facilities, private and public and phenomenal access to telephones.
“At Independence, we had 18,724 operational phone lines for a population of about 45 million. Over 200 million Nigerians now enjoy near-universal access to mobile phones and digital services, indicating we are better off today than 65 years ago.
“In our country, policymakers know that whatever GDP figure NBS publishes may not capture our economy’s full depth and breadth if it fails to include the informal economy, which some pundits have said may even be more significant than the formal economy. This underscores why Dr. Adesina should have considered all aspects of our economy before concluding.
Accordingly, Onanuga said no objective observer can claim that Nigeria has not made progress since 1960.
“Today, as we await the NBS’s recalibration of our GDP, we can comfortably say without contradiction that it is at least 50 times, if not 100 times, more than it was at Independence,” adding that “Adesina spoke like a politician in the mold of Peter Obi and did not do due diligence before making his unverifiable statement.”
