A chieftain of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, Ladan Salihu, has decried that the multidimensional poverty in Nigeria has become worse under the current administration.
Salihu said this on Tuesday when he appeared as a guest in an interview on ‘Prime Time’, a programme on Arise Television monitored by DAILY POST.
According to him, in 2014 multidimensional poverty in Nigeria was 43%, adding that it skyrocketed in 2019, and in 2025, it became even worse.
He added that the figures were not manufactured but released by the World Bank and Nigeria’s bureau of statistics.
The ADC stalwart further lamented that the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, government reforms are too excruciating and downgrading the essence of life and livelihood in Nigeria.
“When I was coming for this programme, I told myself that if it’s going to be a conversation between the APC and the ADC, I will be facing a lot of alibis and innuendos that detailed the chronological failure of a system, a government in charge.
“If I take you back to 2022, the number of multidimensionally poverty-stricken Nigerians was 87 million in the Northern part of the country and 47 from the south.
“When you aggregate it, it’s 141 million, and yet a government will not be sincere with Nigerians.
“A government that is responsive and responsible should speak to and confront these issues head on. The so-called reforms are becoming too excruciating, too unbelievably downgrading the essence of life and livelihood in Nigeria.
“When you remove the oil subsidy, what do you expect to have for Nigerians? Like what former president Olusegun Obasanjo did when he was in government.
“He had several intervention policies like the Education Trust Fund, ETF, which Buhari headed,or the Mass Transit Programme that alleviated the suffering of commuters in Nigeria.
“In 2014 and 2015, N1,500 would take you from Abuja to Kano. Today, it’s N13,000 to N15,000. That is the effect we are seeing after the removal of oil subsidy,” he lamented.
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