Let us stop pretending.
Nigeria’s economic crisis is no longer about policy mistakes or reform pains. It is about official dishonesty — the deliberate promotion of a success story that millions of starving citizens know to be false.
This government is not merely out of touch.
It is talking down to a suffering population.
THE BIG CON: WHEN STATISTICS BECOME A WEAPON
Nigerians are told the economy is improving.
Who exactly is improving?
Certainly not the trader who can no longer restock goods.
Not the civil servant whose salary is dead on arrival.
Not the graduate roaming the streets jobless.
Not the family skipping meals.
Yet, government spokespersons speak with confidence — GDP growth, easing inflation, fiscal discipline — as if numbers alone can cancel hunger.
This is not leadership.
It is economic propaganda.
LET US BE CLEAR: POVERTY IS EXPLODING
The World Bank estimates that over 130 million Nigerians now live in poverty. That is more people than the population of many African countries combined.
The government’s response?
Denial. Dismissal. Deflection.
Instead of emergency action, Nigerians are given excuses.
Instead of accountability, they are given lectures about patience.
This is moral failure at scale.
REFORMS WITHOUT RELIEF ARE REFORMS AGAINST THE PEOPLE
Fuel subsidy removal.
Currency float.
New taxes.
All implemented with brutal speed — without safety nets, without wage protection, without food security.
The result?
Transport costs exploded
Food prices went out of control
Small businesses collapsed
Purchasing power evaporated
Yet government officials still have the audacity to say “the worst is over.”
Over for who?
For politicians on allowances?
For contractors paid in dollars?
For elites insulated from market prices?
TAXING POVERTY IS NOT GOVERNANCE — IT IS VIOLENCE
Only a government detached from reality would increase tax pressure in an economy where:
Real incomes are falling
Unemployment is endemic
Informal businesses are barely breathing
Taxation without prosperity is state-sanctioned extortion.
No serious nation taxes its way out of mass poverty.
You grow production.
You create jobs.
You protect citizens.
Nigeria is doing the opposite.
THE MOST DANGEROUS LIE: “SUFFERING IS NECESSARY”
Nigerians are told suffering is inevitable — that pain today guarantees prosperity tomorrow.
History disagrees.
There is no economic law that says reforms must destroy lives. There is no justification for policy brutality. There is no excuse for indifference to hunger.
When leaders ask citizens to suffer while they remain comfortable, the social contract is broken.
And broken contracts do not heal with speeches.
THIS IS WHY PEOPLE ARE ANGRY
Not because Nigerians “don’t understand economics.”
But because they understand injustice.
They understand when:
Markets say one thing
Kitchens say another
Government insists everyone is wrong except itself
Anger grows when truth is denied.
Silence should not be mistaken for acceptance.
A WARNING, NOT A THREAT
No society survives indefinitely on denial and deprivation.
When governments ignore hunger, hunger eventually speaks. When leaders dismiss pain, pain eventually organizes. When legitimacy collapses, statistics cannot save it.
Nigeria is approaching that edge.
THE BOTTOM LINE
An economy that looks good only in official narratives is not recovering.
A government that argues with poverty data instead of fighting poverty has lost moral authority.
A leadership that demands sacrifice without protection is unfit for trust.
Nigerians are not asking for miracles.
They are asking for honesty, empathy, and relief.
Until then, every talk of “turnaround” is an insult – and Nigerians are no longer in the mood to be insulted.
By Chief Akinwumi Akinfenwa
©️Chief Akinwumi Akinfenwa, Political Scientist, Public Policy Analyst, Social Commentator, and Advocate for Constitutional Decency lives in Ibadan
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