Former Kaduna State Senator and APC chieftain Shehu Sani on Friday issued a scathing reaction to a recent World Bank/IMF-driven narrative about Nigeria’s worsening poverty situation.
Sani accused the two global institutions of prescribing harmful policies under the guise of reform.
What world bank/IMF report says
The latest data from the World Bank’s Poverty & Equity Brief and related assessments show that Nigeria continues to struggle with deeply entrenched poverty and rising inequality.
The World Bank estimates that since 2018/19, an additional 45 million Nigerians have slipped into poverty, pushing the projected poverty rate to around 47 percent in 2024.
In rural areas, the situation is particularly dire: roughly 75.5 percent of rural Nigerians are reported to be living below the poverty line.
For children aged 0–14, the reported poverty rate stands at an alarming 72.5 percent, while education, gender, and geographic inequalities further compound the crisis.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) notes that between 2014 and 2023, Nigeria’s real per capita GDP declined on average by 0.7 percent annually, and in 2023, the poverty rate was estimated at 42 percent.
The World Bank warns that unless structural constraints—institutional weakness, volatility in oil revenues, inflationary pressures, and inequality—are effectively addressed, more Nigerians could fall into poverty in the years ahead.
Shehu Sani’s reaction
In a post circulating on social media, Shehu Sani reacted sharply: “The World Bank and IMF are the Witches and Wizards who will tell you to remove subsidies and float your currency in the ocean and expect the miracle of wealth and prosperity, and when the results turns out to be poverty and misery, they blame you for taking the wrong dosage.”
He accused these institutions of prescribing one-size-fits-all “magic wand” economic policies—such as subsidy removal and full currency liberalization—without regard for local context, and then shifting the blame onto governments when the outcomes are disastrous.
