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The Human Rights Writers Association has charged the Presidency not to live in denial over its criticism of comments made by the President of the African Development Bank, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, regarding the country’s worsening poverty crisis.
In a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, on Monday, HURIWA described the Presidency’s response to Adesina’s remarks as “childish” and “politically twisted”, noting that the Presidency often introduced partisan politics into discussions regarding Nigeria’s situation.
The PUNCH reports that the AfDB President, during a keynote address at an event organised by Chapel Hill Denham in Lagos, had warned that Nigeria’s per capita income has plummeted from $1,847 in 1960 to just $824 today, suggesting that the average Nigerian was worse off now than at independence.
In a rebuttal posted via X (formerly Twitter), the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, dismissed Adesina’s figures as inaccurate. According to Onanuga, Nigeria’s GDP per capita in 1960 was $93, not $1,847, adding that the country’s economic trajectory only took off in the 1970s due to crude oil revenue.
In his statement, however, Onwubiko urged the President to read the World Bank’s report on the country’s growing rural poverty rather than pretending “to be asleep and unaware of the realities on the ground.”
“The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria has told President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to stop berating the President of the African Development Bank (AFDB) Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina on his analogy of the Nigerians’ poverty situation now compared to the 1960s, just as the Rights group said the country’s leader is actively living in denial if he pretends to be unaware that hundreds of thousands of Nigerians are choking, starving and dying from absolute poverty-induced hardships.
The truth is that Mr President introduces partisan politics into everything being discussed about the Nigerian situation, even when those views are from such politically unbiased and unattached personalities and institutions as the President of the African Development Bank, Dr. Akinwunmi Adeshina, or the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.
He attributed the nation’s economic decline to decades of policy missteps, institutional weaknesses, over-reliance on crude oil exports, and chronic underinvestment in key sectors.
But rather than reflect on the lessons embedded in the factual statement by one of the finest brains out of Nigeria on policy missteps of several administrations in the past and now, the Presidency, through the garrulous Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, decided to sound childish by picking holes on the statement made by the President of the African Development Bank Dr Akinwumi Adesina,” the statement partly read.
Citing the World Bank’s April 2025 Poverty and Equity Brief for Nigeria, Onwubiko pointed out that over 75% of Nigerians living in rural areas are now below the poverty line. The group noted that while 41.3% of urban dwellers live in poverty, the situation is even more dire in rural areas, where insecurity, inflation, and economic stagnation have compounded citizens’ hardship.
“HURIWA said everyone who has the gift of discernment and wisdom must know that 1960s Nigeria wasn’t as bad as we are currently, even from the angles of corruption and bad governance, and dictatorial leadership, which is worse now than ever before.
“HURIWA also said governments in the 1960s ensured that educational institutions, health institutions and the built roads were regularly maintained, just as scholarship schemes were liberally offered to the citizens and gaining jobs was easier than it is now. So why is Bayo Onanuga disputing the views of Akinwunmi Adesina, who is one of our very best in terms of knowledge of economics?”
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