By Achile Danjuma
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has rejected the Federal Government’s touting of Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth, accusing the administration of celebrating abstract figures while millions of citizens grapple with hunger, inflation, and collapsing purchasing power.
In a strongly worded press statement issued on Wednesday, the opposition party said the government’s economic messaging is “disconnected from the harsh economic realities facing ordinary Nigerians.”
“People do not eat GDP,” the ADC declared, arguing that growth is meaningless unless it translates into lower food prices, job creation, stronger purchasing power, and improved living conditions.
The statement, signed by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, said Nigeria’s reported economic uptick does nothing to ease the daily suffering in markets, farms, factories, and homes across the country.
“No government should be celebrating economic statistics while millions of its citizens are battling hunger, poverty, collapsing purchasing power, and rising hopelessness,” the ADC said.
The party specifically cited unbearable food prices, punitive transportation costs, widespread small-business closures, salary erosion, and rising unemployment as evidence of a deepening crisis — one it says official GDP figures fail to capture.
“Economic growth that does not reduce suffering, create jobs, improve incomes, or restore dignity to citizens is empty growth,” the ADC said. “Growth that only exists in official reports while citizens descend deeper into hardship is not meaningful progress. It is economic abstraction disconnected from human reality.”
The ADC urged the government to stop “celebrating statistics” and instead show humility, acknowledge the pain Nigerians are experiencing, and focus on policies that deliver measurable improvements in living conditions.
“The purpose of governance is not to manage public relations for economic statistics,” the party said. “The purpose of governance is to improve the living conditions of the people.”
Calling for an economy that works for ordinary citizens — through affordable food, stable electricity, decent jobs, lower business costs, and improved purchasing power — the ADC insisted that until growth is felt in people’s homes, the government has “no moral basis to declare economic success.”
“The true test of economic policy is simple: Can Nigerians live better today than they did yesterday?” the statement reads. “For millions of Nigerians, the answer is no.”
The Federal Government is yet to respond to the ADC’s criticism.