Former Senator Shehu Sani has come out swinging against the World Bank and IMF, accusing them of pushing policies that have plunged millions more Nigerians into poverty.
His outburst follows fresh reports from both institutions showing just how dire things have become.
The numbers are sobering: since 2018, an additional 45 million Nigerians have fallen below the poverty line. Today, nearly half the country, 47 percent, lives in poverty.
In rural areas, it’s even worse. Three out of four people are struggling to survive.
For children under 14, the situation is heartbreaking, over 72 percent are growing up in poverty, with little access to quality education and facing deep inequalities based on where they live and their gender.
The IMF’s report isn’t much better. Between 2014 and 2023, Nigeria’s real income per person actually shrank by 0.7 percent every year.
Both institutions point to familiar culprits: weak institutions, runaway inflation, massive inequality, and the country’s heavy reliance on oil revenue.
But Sani isn’t having any of it. Taking to social media, he didn’t mince words.
“The World Bank and IMF are the witches and wizards who will tell you to remove subsidies and float your currency in the ocean, expecting miracles of wealth and prosperity,” he wrote.
“When the result turns out to be poverty and misery, they blame you for taking the wrong dosage.”
His point is simple: these international bodies push the same economic playbook everywhere, remove subsidies, devalue your currency, liberalize the economy, without considering what actually works on the ground in Nigeria.
And when things go south, they blame the government for not implementing their advice properly.
