Atiku says Nigerians can't eat GDP and he's not wrong

Atiku Abubakar don land another one on this government yesterday, and honestly the man is not even trying to be diplomatic again. He said Nigerians cannot eat Gross Domestic Product or use debt-to-GDP ratios to cook, and that governments are not elected to improve spreadsheets. The man is right. You cannot tell a woman in Mile 12 market that the economy is growing while she cannot afford a paint of rice for her family.

Atiku was reacting to the Presidency's defense of Tinubu's economic performance, and he came with receipts. He said 767 factories have closed down and 335 more are in trouble, and that the only place this economic success exists is in news statements. He even quoted the IMF's own Article IV Consultation which found that 63 percent of Nigerians are living below the poverty line and about 27 million Nigerians faced food insecurity by late 2025. Those are not opposition figures, those are the same institutions the government loves to reference when it suits them.

He also hit them with a Yoruba proverb: the person who went to the bathroom yesterday might forget, but the one who cleaned up the mess never forgets. Nigerians still remember the hurt from every budget year since 2024, and no amount of rewriting history or picking and choosing numbers can change that. So the real question is, if the economy is doing so well, why are families going without food and why are businesses closing every week? Somebody needs to answer that one directly.