The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has validated the World Bank’s October 2025 report on Nigeria, showing that 139 million Nigerians are now living below the poverty line.
The party stated that the report confirmed President Bola Tinubu’s economic policies are harming the lives and livelihoods of the majority of Nigerians.
The ADC noted that the number of Nigerians living below the poverty line has jumped from 81 million in 2019, to 139 million as indicated in the latest World Bank report.
In a statement on Thursday by the spokesman of the ADC, Bolaji Abdullahi, the opposition party said the report exposes the wide gap between the administration’s rhetoric of economic progress and the lived reality of Nigerians.
It regretted that while the administration has been celebrating increased revenue and meeting revenue targets, more citizens are slipping into abject poverty at a rate never seen before in Nigeria.
The party also accused the government of masking its domestic economic failures with creative statistics that paint rosy pictures of economic progress while the people continue to suffer.
The ADC said the current World Bank report indicates that 61 percent of the Nigerian population now live below the poverty line, the highest ever in the country’s history.
The party said, “The Tinubu-led APC government has actually sent more Nigerians into abject poverty, contrary to the government’s performance propaganda and claims of progress.
“The World Bank numbers tell a simple but painful story: under the APC and President Bola Tinubu’s government, more Nigerians have fallen into poverty than at any other time in our history. In 2019, four out of ten Nigerians were poor. Today, it is, at least, six out of ten.
“We recall that President Tinubu, in his recent Independence Day address to the nation, declared triumphantly that ‘the worst is over’ while bandying statistics which have now been proven to be a calculated whitewash to serve the government’s narrative of progress.
“However, what is important is the reality that those numbers were meant to hide. Behind President Tinubu’s shiny statistics, are the grim realities of historic human suffering — families skipping meals, children dropping out of school, and households selling assets just to buy food and basic drugs to survive.
“Under the APC, nearly 30 million Nigerians have now joined the ranks of the ultra-poor — those who, even if they spend every naira they earn on food, still cannot afford enough calories to survive.
“While the government celebrates record revenue collection and the illusion of economic stability, the World Bank’s data shows that Nigerians are actually growing poorer by the day.
“Food inflation has gone through the roof, with the price of a bag of rice multiplying five times in just four years. Poor families now spend roughly 70 percent of their income on food, leaving nothing for rent, school fees, or medicine.
“The so-called social safety nets that should protect the vulnerable have also collapsed. Coverage has fallen from 20 percent in 2019 to just six percent in 2025.
“Government support to the poorest citizens is almost non-existent, amounting to a mere 0.14 percent of GDP compared to a global average of 1.5 percent.”
The party insisted Nigerians are worse off under President Tinubu-led APC government, contrary to the President’s claim that the worst is over.
“Instead, it appears that the worst has actually not arrived. Rather than continuing to dig in to defend its propaganda, the government should accept the unbiased verdict from its partner, the World Bank, and try to make amends before it is too late.
“To make matters worse, the government’s entire approach to poverty measurement now seems designed to flatter itself rather than to help the poor.
“Nigeria’s domestic poverty threshold, roughly N137,000 per month, or about $90, sits far below the global real-value benchmark. By using a deflated local measure, the government effectively undercounts millions of poor Nigerians.
“The implication of this ‘race to the bottom’ statistics, is that using the Tinubu government’s revised definition of poverty, citizens who are globally poor will appear statistically fine in Nigeria.
“In reality, however, they would have become invisible to a policy that mistakes low expectations for progress. A poverty line that is set too low does not protect the poor; it hides them,” the party said.
The ADC further slammed the Tinubu administration, accusing it of attempting to address poverty in the land by redefining it downward.
The opposition party charged the government to quit implementing what it described as cosmetic reform that is harmful to the country’s majority.
“We need a government that puts the people first and understands that inclusive growth is not just another slogan, it is a conscientious strategy.”
The ADC called on the administration to stop celebrating revenue as achievement and start putting the people first by prioritising food security, job creation, and targeted social protection systems.
It charged the President and his team to implement policies that shield the 139 million vulnerable Nigerians “that their ill-thought-out economic policies have created.”
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