World Bank Report Shows ‘Outcome Of Your Policies,’ Atiku’s Aide Tells Tinubu

Phrank Shaibu, the Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, has responded to the World Bank’s report highlighting Nigeria’s deteriorating poverty levels.

Speaking in a statement in Abuja on Friday, he warned that Nigeria’s worsening poverty rate is an indication of how low the country’s economy has sunk since President Bola Tinubu took office.

Shaibu argued that the current economic hardship is no accident, but rather the “direct outcome of poorly conceived and harshly implemented policies.”

He cited the “abrupt removal of fuel subsidies” and the “chaotic devaluation of the naira,” asserting that these measures were “executed without adequate safeguards for the Nigerian people.”

The statement said that the administration’s reliance on abstract macroeconomic indicators ignores the “far harsher reality” faced by the citizenry.

Shaibu noted that “food prices have spiralled out of control, inflation has wiped out incomes, small businesses are collapsing, and millions more Nigerians are being pushed into extreme poverty.”

He described the government’s approach as “economic shock therapy imposed on a vulnerable population.”

“A government that presides over a situation where the majority of its people are poor, yet insists that progress is being made, has lost both moral authority and economic direction.”

He said the administration is “dangerously disconnected from the lived realities of its citizens.”

In contrast to the current “policy experiments,” the statement noted that Atiku Abubakar offers an alternative “rooted in experience, pragmatism, and compassion.”

Shaibu detailed a vision in which “reform must be carefully sequenced, not recklessly imposed,” 

and “social protection must be real, targeted, and transparent, not symbolic.”

He said the Waziri Adamawa’s proposed strategy focuses on stabilising the economy through the coordination of fiscal and monetary policy while “rebuilding productivity through support for small businesses, agriculture, and industry.”