As reactions continue to trail comments by President of the Africa Development Bank, AfDB, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina who said that \u201cthe condition of Nigerians were worse off after 65 years\u201d the former Executive Director of News of the Nigerian Television Authority, Shittu Alamu said the comment was a fact with commanding evidence, hence it shouldn\u2019t have drawn the ire from the presidency.<\/p>\n
Shittu-Alamu faulted President Bola Tinubu\u2019s Special Adviser on Information and Strategic Communication, Bayo Onanuga for condemning Adesina over the comment, which he said didn\u2019t go down well with the presidency.<\/p>\n
Recall that Dr Adesina, an Agric Economist spoke to power last week, drawing a comparison between the Nigerian people of 1960 at independence and their counterparts he found on the streets 65 years later and declared that Nigerians were worse off.<\/p>\n
Tinubu\u2019s aide in swift response condemned the AfDB boss and blamed him for basing his conclusion on what he calls \u201cfigures that do not align with available data.\u201d<\/p>\n
Onanuga had insisted that \u201cNo objective observer can claim that Nigeria has not made progress since 1960\u2033.<\/p>\n
The former NTA boss argued that Dr Akinwunmi had during his tenure as Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development in the former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan administration, introduced robust policies towards reforming the agriculture sector, but were sadly abandoned by successive governments,including the current administration.<\/p>\n
According to him, Adesina was only echoing the reality of the pathetic condition of Nigerians, many of whom struggle to eke out a living without boasting of three meals a day.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cBut seriously speaking, is Onanuga right? No,\u00a0 he is not. He can\u2019t be right.<\/p>\n
This is because having plenty of money in one\u2019s pocket does not translate into wealth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the common man fed his family with five or even ten naira in a month in the 1960s years but does so with five hundred thousand naira in a month today, 65 years later, would we say such a man has progressed?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe presidential aide also accused the AfDB boss of \u201cspeaking like a politician in the mould of Peter Obi but did not do his due diligence before making his unverifiable statement\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill an Agricultural Economist like the AfDB boss make an unverifiable statement? Will he? Should he? Will he not do due diligence before he talks about his own country?<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes he not readily see the result of government initiatives and policies in the people? Let us be more frank and factual. As President of AfDB can Dr.Adesina truly be said to be someone who does not have economic indices of all African nations at his fingertips?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe may not be experts in Economic matters, even as Onanuga wants us to believe. We can give it to him that GDP per capita is not the only criterion we can use to determine whether people live better now than they did in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the same, our little understanding of basic Economics tells us it is a poor tool for assessing the living standard of our people. Is GDP per capita not always silent on whether we as Nigerians enjoy better access to health care, education and transportation, such as rail, and air now than we did in 1960, 65 years back?\u201d<\/p>\n
As reactions continue to trail comments by President of the Africa Development Bank, AfDB, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina who said that \u201cthe condition of Nigerians were worse off after 65 years\u201d the former Executive Director...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5732"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5735,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5732\/revisions\/5735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}