The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has described recent reports that Nigeria’s poverty rate has risen to 63% after the removal of petrol subsidy as the real scorecard of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the consequence of his ill-defined neoliberal economic policies.

In a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the party said the new figures reflected the worsening economic hardship facing millions of Nigerians as rising fuel and transport costs continue to push up the cost of living.

The ADC noted that the new report only confirmed earlier surveys that indicated deep public dissatisfaction with the direction the country is heading under the APC administration.

The party expressed its belief that the standard measure of any economic policy is whether it has made life better for the majority of citizens and protected the most vulnerable, stressing that “On this score, the APC government has failed.”

The statement read, “The African Democratic Congress considers latest report showing that Nigeria’s poverty rate has risen to 63% following the removal of petrol subsidy by President Tinubu three years ago as a damning verdict on the administration’s economic policies.

“Yet, this report only confirms what millions of Nigerians already know from their daily experience: the cost of living is rising rapidly, purchasing power is collapsing, and families across the country are being pushed deeper into hardship.

“The report, presented at a policy dialogue in Abuja Thursday indicated that poverty in Nigeria rose sharply from about 50 percent before the subsidy removal to 63 percent afterward, as higher fuel and transport costs spread through the economy and drove up the prices of food, transportation, and other basic necessities.

“This verdict reflects the real consequences of the APC government’s hasty removal of fuel subsidy without giving full consideration to how such a serious decision would impact on the livelihoods of ordinary citizens.

“Government has repeatedly justified the removal of subsidy on the need to divert resources to areas of critical needs, including health and education.

“Three years on, none of these sectors has been funded any better, and citizens have not seen the benefits of subsidy removal.

“Independent surveys already show that 93 percent of Nigerians believe that under President Tinubu, the country is heading in the wrong direction, even as 88 percent describe the national economy as bad, while another 74 percent say their personal living conditions are poor.

“These are not abstract statistics, they are the voices of a population under intense economic pressure.

“There is also mounting evidence of widespread deprivation. A large majority of Nigerians report going without basic necessities such as food, clean water, medical care, cooking fuel, and even cash income at different times during the past year.

“For millions of households, economic hardship is no longer a temporary difficulty, it has become daily reality. This is what happens when government is more concerned with external validation than the well-being of its own people.” (Nigerian Tribune)

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