Nigeria’s GDP: Bayo Onanuga attacks AfDB President, Adesina, says he spoke like Peter Obi
Akinwumi Adesina is yet another Nigeria that would raise a point of order over the unethical handling of the country’s economy but who would be described as not saying the truth. Former Kaduna State Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai’s similar alarm was described, not only by Ononuga but also several members of Tinubu’s government, party and group, as fighting because he was not given appointment by the president.
Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to Bola Ahmed Tinubu, President of Nigeria, Bayo Onanuga, has launched a return match kind of attack on the Nigeria-born Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), over his recent comment about the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) decline in 2025 to 1960 low.
Ononuga said, “Adesina spoke like a politician, in the mould of Peter Obi and did not do due diligence before making his unverifiable statement.”
The AfDB President, Akinwumi Adesina had stated that Nigerians today are worse off than in 1960.
He said that Nigeria’s GDP per capita in 1960 was $1847 and that it is $824 today, but the Tinubu’s spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, sounding very uncomfortable with that, says the Africa’s number one banker based his conclusion on figures that do not align with available data. “The quoted figures are not correct”, he countered.
In a statement in the early hours of Monday May 5, 2025 on his verified Facebook timeline, titled, ‘AKINWUMI ADESINA’S CLAIMS ON NIGERIA’S GDP PER CAPITA: THE FACTS TELL A DIFFERENT STORY,’ Bayo Onanuga said the AfDB boss said not the truth about the nation’s state of economy.
“A few days ago, outgoing AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina claimed that Nigerians today are worse off than in 1960, basing his conclusion on figures that do not align with available data.
“According to Nairametrics, he claimed that Nigeria’s GDP per capita in 1960 was $1847 and that it is $824 today. The quoted figures are not correct.
“According to available data, our country’s GDP was $4.2 billion in 1960, and per capita income for a population of 44.9 million was $93, not even one hundred dollars.
“Our country’s GDP did not rise remarkably until the 1970s, when crude earnings ballooned. In 1970, our GDP rose to $12.55 billion. In 1975, it was $27.7 billion, $64.2 billion in 1980, and $164 billion in 1981. Up until 1980, per capita income did not exceed $880. It rose to $2187 in 1981 and dropped to $1844 in 1982. In 2014, after rebasing, it reached an all-time high of $3,200.
“These facts raise questions about the source of Dr Adesina’s figures.
“But my mission in this response is not to poke holes in the erudite African banking president’s figures. The more substantive issue lies in Dr. Adesina’s conclusion based on these numbers.
“Dr Adesina should know that GDP per capita is not the only criterion used to determine whether people live better lives now than in the past. Indeed, it is a poor tool for assessing living standards.
“Its primary usefulness is in giving us the metrics to compare economic output in a country or between countries.
“GDP masks many activities in a country’s economy. It neither discloses wealth distribution or income inequality nor accounts for the informal economy, which experts have said is enormous. It does not account for subsistence farming or income transfer from one family member to another.
“GDP per capita is silent on whether Nigerians in 2025 enjoy better access to healthcare, education, and transportation, such as rail and air transport, than in 1960.
“This premise alone suggests why Dr Adesina should not have arrived at his conclusion. Compared with 1960, Nigeria today has more primary, secondary, and tertiary schools. We have more road networks and more medical facilities, private and public. We have phenomenal access to telephones. At Independence, we had 18,724 operational phone lines for a population of about 45 million. Over 200 million Nigerians now enjoy near-universal access to mobile phones and digital services, indicating we are better off today than 65 years ago.
“In our country, policymakers know that whatever GDP figure NBS publishes may not capture our economy’s full depth and breadth if it fails to include the informal economy, which some pundits have said may even be more significant than the formal economy. This underscores why Dr. Adesina should have considered all aspects of our economy before concluding.
“When Vodacom, a telecommunications company, considered entering the Nigerian market in 1999 or 2000, its consultants, using the available GDP metrics, advised against it. They believed that Nigerians were too poor to afford GSM services. However, MTN and other companies that entered the market later proved them wrong, demonstrating that GDP figures alone do not provide a complete picture of a country’s economic potential or the living standards of its people.
“MTN and other adventurers came later, and they laughed all the way to the bank. More than 20 years later, they are still laughing despite some setbacks in 2023 and 2024. In its first-quarter results this year, MTN declared revenue of N1 trillion and an increase of 8.2 percent in subscriptions, which took the number of its voice and data users to 84 million. Does this MTN experience correlate with a country worse off than in 1960, when we had analogue telephones and the number of lines was fewer than 20,000?
“No objective observer can claim that Nigeria has not made progress since 1960. Today, as we await the NBS’s recalibration of our GDP, we can comfortably say without contradiction that it is at least 50 times, if not 100 times, more than it was at Independence,” said the President Tinubu’s spokesman, Bayo Onanuga.
Akinwumi Adesina is yet another Nigeria that would raise a point of order over the unethical handling of the country’s economy but who would be described as not saying the truth. Former Kaduna State Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai’s similar alarm was described, not only by Ononuga but also several members of Tinubu’s government, party and group, as fighting because he was not given appointment by the president.
Although the situation in the country has reached a point that even the president himself has realised that Nigerians are already done with hi and that he cannot win a free, fair and credible election in 2027, leading to the confusion going on amidst accusing fingers pointing at his family as using position influence, violence, coercion and money to get individuals and groups including the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) to publicly say positive things about him.
Surely, the president’s team can learn from citizen feedback. No need to spend so much public time on defense; we are all Nigerians seeking ways to make Nigeria better.
Here is the point. We are defending and coping more than we are building. It’s time to build now.
Every nation faces adversity, but not all treat dysfunction as destiny. Today, Nigeria stands at a defining crossroads. One path leads to continued stagnation – a quiet surrender to diminished expectations and the erosion of collective potential. The other demands courage: the resolve to reimagine and rebuild a nation that works for all, anchored in equity, opportunity, and purpose. The choice is ours. The moment is urgent. And the time for bold and visionary leadership is now.
In Nigeria, coping has become culture. Survival is our default strategy. But while we endure, national ambition has withered. Our extraordinary creativity is stifled, misdirected, or ignored. Millions of Nigerians make do with far too little; not for lack of ability, but because our systems are broken and our leaders are largely unaccountable.
This cannot be our permanent condition.
If you’ve begun to question why endurance is no longer enough, and what it might mean to truly build a better Nigeria, you are not alone.
Coping is not a strategy for greatness. Neither are excuses, endless blame games, or academic post-mortems on our failures. What we need are results: the kind driven by bold leadership, national purpose, and active citizen engagement. These are the true engines of progress. These should keep our leaders across government, business, and civil society up at night.
Instead, Nigeria has developed a dangerous capacity to endure. We shrug. We rationalize. We whisper, “It could have been worse.” But this is not resilience. It is quiet surrender. Dysfunction has become our norm.
We’ve outsourced ambition to individuals. We excel alone but flounder together. There’s no unifying dream. No galvanizing national purpose. Meanwhile, a tiny elite hoards privilege, shuffles positions, and toasts to mediocrity. Rarely do they act out of love for country or even basic respect for citizens.
What a waste.
Ordinary Nigerians carry the weight of a poisoned economy, a failing currency, rising insecurity, extractive politics, and crumbling public services. And yet we survive – not because hope is alive, but because coping has become second nature. But survival, once a badge of honor, has become a sedative. It dulls outrage and delays the reckoning we desperately need.
Our national addiction to endurance must stop.
Has Nigeria’s political class become permanently comfortable treating citizens as spectators to power? Are we sliding into tribal and religious silos, treating the nation itself as an orphaned project-tossed from one opportunistic elite to another?
Why does it seem so impossibly hard to build a merit-based, functional, inclusive society? Why is the gap between promises and progress so wide in a nation brimming with world-class talent and some of the highest paid public officials on the planet?
In the familiar cadence of Nigerian sarcasm: “Who did this to us?”
The answer is uncomfortable. We all did. Or at least, we allowed it.
And yet, we are not blind. Nigerians are globally mobile, digitally savvy, and increasingly conscious of what good governance looks like. We admire and applaud countries that are prioritizing good governance and sound public outcomes. But when it comes to our own country, we shrug, scroll, pray, and cope.
Countries like Singapore, Germany, China, and the U.S. are not miracles. They are products of vision, strategy, and collective work. They don’t tranquilize themselves with speeches and palliatives. They build.
Nigeria can build too. We have the people, the talent, the resources. But we lack an organizing purpose and a leadership that puts country before self. Greatness demands urgency, contribution, and a mass refusal to normalize mediocrity.
We have coped long enough. It’s time to build.
We cannot outsource progress. We must rebuild Nigeria with equity and excellence as non-negotiables. We must reject corruption, the glorification of wealth without work, and the insult of impunity.
Why? Because the stakes are staggering and half measures with not get us anywhere decent.
Fight banditry with half measures and lose your country inch by inch. Chase corruption after the loot is gone and you’ll never catch up. Borrow dollars endlessly and the Naira will still fall unless we build real productivity to hold it up.
A recent African Development Bank report estimates Africa loses over $140 billion annually to corruption. Nigeria is among the top offenders. Yet we also have the most tech startups in Africa and a globally celebrated diaspora. Talent is not the problem. Leadership is. Coordination is. Vision is. Chinua Achebe told us this long ago.
So where do we go from here?
We start small but think big. No more parochialism in public office. No more tribal or partisan licenses for inequity. Let us invest in regional comparative advantages. Let clusters of local productivity drive value chains that fuel a truly national economy.
And we must each do our part:
Demand transparency.
Invest in civic education.
Support reformers.
Mentor the next generation.
Use every platform to challenge impunity.
Vote – wisely and relentlessly.
Most of all, we must reject the dangerous lie that Nigeria is unfixable. That myth is convenient for those who benefit from the rot. It’s not true. Nigeria can rise. But not if we continue to merely cope.
It’s time to build-with intention, with urgency, and with fierce belief in the future.