Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has torn into the Tinubu administration over what he described as a steady collapse in the purchasing power of Nigerian households, pointing to fresh Central Bank data as proof that families can no longer afford basic necessities like homes and cars.
The latest Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Household Expectations Survey paints a grim picture of consumer sentiment across the country.
Buying conditions were recorded at just 28.7 points for motor vehicles, 28.9 for consumer durables, and 30.0 for buildings and landed property – figures that suggest most households now see these assets as far out of reach.
Even more telling is the appetite to spend. Willingness to purchase vehicles slumped to 18.7 points, while willingness to buy property or land stood at only 19.2 points, underscoring just how squeezed household budgets have become under current economic conditions.
For Atiku, those numbers speak louder than any government press release. In a statement issued Saturday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, the former vice president insisted the figures came straight from the government’s own books.
“These are not figures manufactured by the opposition,” he stressed but “are the verdict of Nigerian households captured by the Central Bank under President Tinubu’s own government.”
According to the African Democratic Congress presidential candidate, the crisis has gone far beyond expensive food and transport – it is now eating into Nigerians’ ability to build any kind of financial future.
“What the figures tell us is simple: Nigerians are being priced out of decent living,” Atiku lamented stating, “A home is becoming a fantasy. A car is becoming a luxury.
“Household appliances are increasingly beyond reach,” he said, noting that many families now spend everything they earn on food, transportation, electricity and school fees, with nothing left over to save or invest.
He didn’t stop at the CBN figures. Atiku also invoked the latest SBM Jollof Index, which pegs the cost of preparing a pot of jollof rice for a family of five at N29,578 – a figure he says exposes the widening gap between wages and the cost of living.
Against Nigeria’s N70,000 minimum wage, he pointed out, a single pot of jollof rice alone could swallow more than 40 percent of a worker’s monthly pay, long before rent, transport, electricity, school fees or healthcare enter the picture.
“Only recently, the Jollof Index told us what Tinubu’s economy has done to the Nigerian kitchen. Now the CBN survey is telling us what it has done to the Nigerian dream,” he said.
“Tinubu first stole jollof rice from the family dining table. Now, his economy is taking away the house in which the table should stand and the car with which the breadwinner should get to work,” Atiku, who has attempted to be president of Nigeria on many occasions, said.
He didn’t spare government officials either, accusing them of hiding behind macroeconomic statistics while ignoring the everyday reality of struggling households.
“Government officials can celebrate GDP growth, foreign reserves and other statistics from air-conditioned conference rooms, but ordinary Nigerians have become unwilling economists, calculating every cup of rice, every litre of fuel and every transport fare before deciding what their families can afford. Between official statistics and empty cooking pots, the cooking pots do not lie,” he said.
He warned that the erosion of household spending power isn’t just a domestic hardship story – it’s a ticking time bomb for the broader economy, with weak consumer demand eventually dragging down production, jobs and livelihoods.
“An economy is not successful merely because government officials can quote favourable statistics. An economy succeeds when citizens can work, earn, eat, save, invest and progressively improve their standard of living.
“Before there is GDP, there must be dinner. Before there is prosperity, there must be purchasing power,” he said.
The Federal Government, for its part, has continued to defend its economic reforms – chief among them the removal of the petrol subsidy and the liberalisation of the foreign exchange market – insisting the moves were necessary to stabilise the economy and set the stage for long-term growth.
Officials have cited gains in select macroeconomic indicators as proof the reforms are paying off, even as ordinary Nigerians continue to battle high food prices, soaring transport costs and shrinking household budgets.
But Atiku wasn’t buying it. He insisted that no economic policy can be judged a success unless it translates into real improvement in people’s daily lives.
“President Tinubu should stop governing Nigeria through PowerPoint economics. The real economy is the Nigerian family’s pocket, and that pocket is increasingly empty.
“A government,” he said, “under which families struggle to afford jollof rice, workers cannot contemplate buying cars and millions see home ownership disappearing beyond the horizon cannot proclaim prosperity.”
“Tinubu has not merely increased the cost of living,” Atiku pointed out but “has increased the cost of dreaming.”
(The Whistler)
