• Says reforms are addressing structural weaknesses • Insists inherited poverty is not a product of Tinubu’s reforms James Emejo in Abuja The Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation (BoF), Mr Tanimu Yakubu, yesterday said the widespread poverty and hardship confronting Nigerians could not be attributed to the economic reforms introduced by the administration of President Bola Tinubu. Yakubu said Nigeria entered the reform period burdened by deep-rooted economic weaknesses, including low productivity, foreign exchange distortions, fiscal leakages, unreliable power supply, insecurity, poor infrastructure and weak job creation, stressing that the persistence of these problems should not automatically be blamed on the reforms. In a statement titled, “Poverty, Reform and the Problem of Causation,” Yakubu said the central issue was to distinguish between the conditions that produced Nigeria’s poverty crisis and the policies currently being deployed to address them. He spoke against the backdrop of a report citing World Bank data suggesting that a large proportion of Nigerians were either living below the poverty line or vulnerable to falling into poverty. Yakubu cautioned against interpreting the figure as a conventional poverty headcount, explaining that the World Bank’s assessment also included people who were above the poverty line but remained vulnerable to economic shocks. He said the distinction did not diminish the severity of the social crisis but was necessary for a proper assessment of the country’s economic condition. “The pain is real; the conclusion does not follow automatically,” he said, adding that the persistence of poverty nearly three years into the reform programme did not establish that the reforms had caused the hardship. According to him, Nigeria did not enter the reform period as a healthy economy that was suddenly destabilised by policy changes. Rather, he said, the country had accumulated years of structural weaknesses, including weak per capita growth, low productivity, insecurity in food-producing areas, unreliable electricity supply, poor logistics, limited formal employment, foreign exchange scarcity, multiple exchange rates and inflationary financing. He also identified the former fuel subsidy regime and fiscal leakages among the distortions that had placed increasing pressure on public finances. Yakubu maintained that the poverty crisis predated the reforms and should, therefore, be assessed against the economic conditions inherited by the administration in 2023. The Director-General pointed to improvements in key macroeconomic indicators as evidence that the reform programme had begun to address some of the structural problems. He cited World Bank data showing that Nigeria recorded real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of four per cent in 2025, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also estimated growth at four per cent in 2025 and projected 4.1 per cent for 2026. Gross international reserves, he added, rose to about $46 billion at the end of 2025 from approximately $40 billion a year earlier, while net international reserves increased from $23 billion to $35 billion. Yakubu stressed that such improvements could not simply be dismissed because households were still struggling with the high cost of living. He said macroeconomic stabilisation alone was, however, insufficient, stressing that the government must ensure that improved economic stability translated into higher productivity, increased investment, employment and household incomes. “Stabilising the economy is not enough; government must make that stability useful to ordinary people,” he said. He also rejected the interpretation that the decline in Nigeria’s GDP measured in US dollars necessarily represented a corresponding contraction in the volume of economic activity. According to him, the depreciation of the naira significantly affected the dollar conversion of Nigeria’s output, making current-dollar GDP an inappropriate standalone measure for determining whether domestic production had expanded or contracted. He said real GDP, productivity, employment, sectoral output and real household consumption were more appropriate indicators for assessing changes in domestic economic activity. Yakubu acknowledged that the depreciation of the naira had inflicted real welfare losses by reducing the foreign currency value of wages, savings and assets, while increasing the naira cost of imported goods. He maintained, however, that such effects should not be confused with a collapse in real production. While defending the direction of the reforms, Yakubu acknowledged that Nigerians had continued to bear significant adjustment costs.
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