The Democratic Front (TDF) has faulted former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s claim that President Bola Tinubu’s reforms have worsened poverty, saying his own economic policies left millions of Nigerians poor when he exited office.
In a statement signed by its Chairman, Mallam Danjuma Muhammad, and Secretary, Chief Wale Adedayo, the group described the former president’s remarks at the Financial Times Africa Summit 2026 in London as regrettable.
“It is regrettable that the octogenarian former President failed to remember that his decision to waste the nation’s hard-earned foreign exchange in propping up the value of the naira at the expense of providing electricity and other infrastructure that should galvanise production and productivity, forced 86 million Nigerians into multi-dimensional poverty in the year 2007,” the statement said.
TDF recalled that Obasanjo operated multiple windows of foreign exchange, which it said encouraged arbitrage and round-tripping of subsidised dollars.
According to the group, this gradually drained Nigeria’s foreign reserves and weakened local production, at the cost of economic growth and development.
It also accused the former president of initiating the sale of state-owned companies and enterprises, which it said cost many Nigerians their jobs.
The group added that the policy raised the nation’s import bills by making consumers more dependent on costly imported goods, while limiting the government’s ability to invest in electricity, agriculture, education, health, infrastructure and industrialisation.
The group said it was sad and embarrassing that Obasanjo, who it said presided over an economy that could not keep pace with population growth because of subsidies on both petroleum and the local currency, would accuse Tinubu of worsening poverty.
“In fact, Obasanjo’s own fiscal and monetary policy misnomer forced 86 million Nigerians into multi-dimensional poverty as at the time he left power in 2007,” it said.
TDF rejected the former president’s claim as false and misleading, insisting that the naira was not devalued as alleged but allowed to find its true value without negative implications for the nation’s fiscal and monetary policies.
It further noted that poverty triggered by petrol and naira subsidies forced Obasanjo to create the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) in 2001, an agency it described as largely unsuccessful.
According to the group, seven years of NAPEP under Obasanjo did not achieve the progress recorded in three years of Tinubu’s initiatives.
It listed these as wage and pension increases, payment of billions of naira in pension arrears, student loans, CREDICORP consumer loans, SMEDAN loans to small and medium businesses, and cash transfers to vulnerable persons.
“We call on Nigerians to disregard Obasanjo’s politically motivated tirades against Tinubu’s reform,” the group said.
TDF argued that the former leader made the remarks to give an undue advantage to his preferred candidate in the forthcoming presidential election.
