In what has become a norm with the Goodluck Jonathan administration to discountenance local and international independent assessments that appear unfavourable to the government, the Presidency on Saturday claimed that the African Development Bank (AfDB)’s report on Nigeria’s poverty reduction efforts was false.
The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Reuben Abati, said the report was “devoid of truth and political.”
The AfDB, in its annual report titled African Economic Outlook, said poverty has worsened since 1996 and through 11 years of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, rule.
“The proportion of people (Nigerians) living below the national poverty line has worsened from 65.5 per cent in 1996 to 69.0 per cent in 2010,” the report said.
The PDP has ruled Nigeria since 1999, 11 of the 15 years covered by the AfDB report.
The report follows others by other regional and global organisations including the World Bank that were also denounced by the Jonathan administration.
The World Bank had stated in its ‘Nigeria Economic Report’ released in May that “Poverty rates remain high in Nigeria, particularly in rural areas. These rates declined between 2003-2004 and 2009- 2010, although not nearly as fast as would be expected from the pace of economic growth in the country,” the World Bank said in May, 2013.”
“While the officially reported growth rates of GDP well exceed population growth in the country, the pace of poverty reduction does not, this implies that the number of poor Nigerians living below the poverty line has grown measurably,” the report stated.
The AfDB in its report also faulted efforts by the Nigerian government led by President Goodluck Jonathan to fight poverty .
“Nigeria’s prospect of halving poverty by 2015 seems weak,” the report stated.
While questioning the AfDB report, Mr. Abati said that it was inconceivable that AfDB’s report came barely a month after the United Nations gave an award to Nigeria for its efforts at reducing poverty significantly in the country.
He recalled that the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), a UN body, at its 38th Session in Rome in late June gave an award to Nigeria as one of the nations that made significant progress in reducing hunger.
The Minister of Agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina, represented President Goodluck Jonathan in receiving the award on behalf of the government, he stated. Mr. Adesina presented the award to the president during a Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting.
Mr. Abati said that such a negative report from the AfDB some weeks after the FAO award was “suspicious and laced with falsehood and political’’.
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