Presidential aide Bayo Onanuga has faulted recent claims by outgoing African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina that Nigerians are worse off today than they were in 1960, describing the assertion as “based on figures that do not align with available data.”
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, Onanuga argued that Adesina’s comparison of Nigeria’s GDP per capita in 1960 and 2025 was flawed and misleading.
According to Nairametrics, he claimed that Nigeria’s GDP per capita in 1960 was $1,847 and that it is $824 today. The quoted figures are not correct,” he wrote.
He cited data showing that Nigeria’s GDP in 1960 was $4.2 billion, with a population of 44.9 million, putting per capita income at just $93. “Ninety-three, not even one hundred dollars,” he emphasised.
Onanuga further noted that Nigeria’s economic growth only began to rise significantly in the 1970s due to oil revenue.
Our country’s GDP did not rise remarkably until the 1970s, when crude earnings ballooned. In 1970, our GDP rose to $12.55 billion. In 1975, it was $27.7 billion, $64.2 billion in 1980, and $164 billion in 1981.
Up until 1980, per capita income did not exceed $880. It rose to $2187 in 1981 and dropped to $1844 in 1982,” he said, adding that it reached a peak of $3,200 in 2014 after a GDP rebasing.
He questioned Adesina’s data sources, stating, “These facts raise questions about the source of Dr. Adesina’s figures.”
Beyond the figures, Onanuga said the real issue was the conclusion drawn from them.
GDP per capita is not the only criterion used to determine whether people live better lives now than in the past. Indeed, it is a poor tool for assessing living standards,” he stated.
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He argued that GDP masks economic realities such as wealth distribution, informal economic activity, and quality of life indicators.
GDP per capita is silent on whether Nigerians in 2025 enjoy better access to healthcare, education, and transportation, such as rail and air transport than in 1960,” he added.
Highlighting the digital revolution, Onanuga recalled that in 1960, Nigeria had only 18,724 telephone lines for about 45 million people.
Today, over 200 million Nigerians have access to mobile and digital services.
Does this MTN experience correlate with a country worse off than in 1960, when we had analogue telephones and the number of lines was fewer than 20,000?” he asked, referencing MTN’s N1 trillion revenue and 84 million users in Q1 2025.
He also criticised Adesina for what he described as a politically motivated statement.
Adesina spoke like a politician, in the mould of Peter Obi, and did not do due diligence before making his unverifiable statement,” he said.
Onanuga concluded that Nigeria’s current economic scale is unrecognisable compared to the 1960s.
Today, as we await the NBS’s recalibration of our GDP, we can comfortably say without contradiction that it is at least 50 times, if not 100 times, more than it was at Independence.”
