President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms pushed more Nigerians into poverty. That admission came from the President’s Special Adviser on Policy Communication, Daniel Bwala.
Bwala said this on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday. He was defending the government’s economic policies since Tinubu took office in 2023.
The big reforms were the removal of the petrol subsidy and the unification of the foreign exchange market. Those moves sent the cost of living flying. Nigerians and businesses now pay more for transport, logistics and production.
Bwala admitted the pain but said it comes with the territory.
“Please let it be clear even to the opposition, the reason why you have this number of poor people and some of these doomsday analytics that people are giving is because we undertook a reform,” he said.
“There is no part of the world where you start a reform like that there will not be discomfort. More people went down to poverty, acknowledged, but since when the reform started to today, we have made marked progress which is what we have spent the last three years talking to Nigerians about.”
He insisted things are looking up.
“So, you cannot discount that even though there are quite a number of our population that are poor which we admit, but we have made progress so far,” he added.
The Federal Government has kept saying the reforms were needed to fix long-standing problems in the economy and strengthen the country’s finances.
In his October 1 Independence Day speech, Tinubu pointed to gains since the reforms kicked in. He said inflation had dropped from its peak, foreign reserves had been rebuilt and the foreign exchange market had become more stable. He said the country was moving from reforms to prosperity.
Bwala also touched on the 2027 presidential election. He is confident Tinubu will win by a bigger margin than in 2023. Part of his hope, he said, comes from support the President has received from some governors elected on opposition platforms.
