Abuja, Nigeria – October 9, 2025 – The Nigerian Presidency has sharply rebuked a fresh World Bank report estimating that 139 million Nigerians—over 62% of the population—are trapped in poverty despite sweeping economic reforms under President Bola Tinubu, labeling the figure as “unrealistic, exaggerated, and detached from the country’s actual economic conditions.” The rebuttal, issued just a day after the report’s release, underscores deepening tensions between the government and international lenders over how to measure and address Nigeria’s entrenched socioeconomic woes.
The World Bank’s October 2025 Nigeria Development Update, titled “From Policy to People: Bringing the Reform Gains Home,” launched in Abuja on Wednesday, painted a sobering picture of the nation’s progress. Country Director Mathew Verghis acknowledged macroeconomic strides—like rising government revenues, stabilized foreign reserves, and moderating inflation—stemming from Tinubu’s reforms since 2023, including fuel subsidy removal and naira unification. Yet, he warned that these gains have yet to permeate everyday lives, with poverty surging from 87 million in 2018/19 to 129 million earlier this year, and now hitting 139 million in 2025. “Despite these stabilisation gains, many households are still struggling with eroded purchasing power,” Verghis stated, attributing the rise to pre-2019 policy errors, COVID-19 shocks, and the lingering bite of inflation that has quintupled the cost of basic food baskets since 2019.
In a fiery response on X (formerly Twitter), President Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Sunday Dare, decried the estimate as a “modelled global construct” rooted in outdated data and flawed metrics. He explained that the 139 million tally derives from the international poverty line of $2.15 per person per day, established in 2017 via Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) calculations, which rely on Nigeria’s last comprehensive household survey from 2018/19. “This measure overlooks the informal and subsistence economies that sustain millions of households,” Dare argued, calling it “mathematically impossible” given recent indicators like a 3.46% GDP growth in Q2 2025 and expanded social safety nets. The government highlighted initiatives such as the revamped Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program, now reaching 15 million households via digital verification, and a new ₦70,000 minimum wage as evidence of tangible relief on the horizon.
The clash has ignited a firestorm on social media and among economists. Opposition voices, including the Labour Party, seized on the report to lambast the administration, with one analyst tweeting, “From policy to people? More like from promises to pain—seven million businesses collapsed, wages slashed by 300%, and now this.” Professor Uche Uwaleke of Nasarawa State University described the Bank’s findings as a “wake-up call,” urging faster welfare interventions amid widespread food insecurity. Supporters of Tinubu, however, rallied behind the Presidency, with hashtags like #ReformsWorking trending as users shared anecdotes of budding recovery in local markets.
As Nigeria navigates this verbal joust with one of its key development partners, the debate lays bare a core challenge: bridging the chasm between sterile statistics and street-level survival. The World Bank has called for urgent investments in agriculture, social protection, and job creation to “translate reform gains home,” while the Presidency vows independent assessments to “tell Nigeria’s story accurately.” With elections looming in 2027, these numbers—real or contested—could define the battle for public trust in a nation where hope and hardship coexist uneasily.