Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has criticised President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms, arguing that the devaluation of the naira has significantly reduced Nigerians’ purchasing power and worsened poverty.
Obasanjo spoke on Wednesday at the Financial Times Africa Summit 2026 in London, where he questioned the impact of the administration’s economic policies introduced in 2023.
He said the naira’s depreciation from about N500 to the dollar to N1,500 had impoverished Nigerians, describing the development as a major setback for the country.
“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,” he said.
The former President described Nigeria as “the poverty capital of the world”, arguing that the country had recorded a large number of people living in poverty.
Obasanjo also rejected calls for the Tinubu administration to be given more time to deliver on its reforms, saying he had yet to see improvements in the economy.
“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 asked.
He maintained that the administration’s policies were not in Nigerians’ best interests and questioned the pace and direction of the reforms.
On petrol subsidy removal, Obasanjo acknowledged the widespread impact of fuel costs but argued that corruption accounted for much of what Nigeria had described as subsidy.
He called on the government to tackle corruption, waste and unnecessary luxury while increasing production, particularly given the country’s economic challenges.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) unified the foreign exchange windows on June 14, 2023, when the official exchange rate stood at about N460.80 to the dollar. The naira subsequently weakened, with the official rate reaching about N1,333.54 on October 19, 2026, after falling to around N1,607.05 in early May 2025.
Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that headline inflation fell to 14.63 per cent in September from 20.98 per cent a year earlier. Food inflation, however, stood at 19.59 per cent, while the economy grew by 4.43 per cent in real terms in the second quarter.
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, said on August 19 that the removal of the petrol subsidy had saved the government N15.8tn between June 2023 and December 2025.
Efforts to obtain the Presidency’s response were unsuccessful, as the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, could not be reached.
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