Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has criticised President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms and rejected the argument that the president needed more time to complete his reforms, saying he did not see the economy improving.
Speaking at the Financial Times Africa Summit 2026 in London, United Kingdom, on Wednesday, the former president said the reforms were “not in the best interest of Nigerians,” adding, “Nobody can deny that.”
He accused President Tinubu of making every Nigerian poor by 300 per cent through the devaluation of the naira, saying the policy has turned Nigeria into “the poverty capital of the world.”
He pointed out that the naira lost its value overnight due to economic reforms undertaken by the Tinubu administration in 2023.
“We do not live in isolation as a country. We interact with the rest of the world. And overnight, you devalue the currency by 300 per cent. The naira went from N500 to a dollar to N1,500 to a dollar. What that meant was that every Nigerian is made poor by 300 per cent.”
Obasanjo said that had made Nigeria “the poverty capital of the world,” which he said meant the country had the largest number of poor people in the world.
“You cannot say to me that that is good for Nigeria. You cannot say to me that that is good for us in any sense,” he noted.
“For the economy, I don’t see anything getting better. What policies are you seeing through? You impoverish your people, and you want to see impoverishment through?” he remarked.
On the petrol subsidy, he said fuel affected “everybody and everything,” but argued that a lot of what Nigeria called subsidy was corruption and should be tackled first.
He stressed that a country in a very bad economic situation must “curb corruption, wastefulness and unnecessary luxury and produce.”
