Those upbraiding her say it amounts to vainglory for Nigeria to lay claim to having an economy that is bigger than South Africa’s when all indices point to the contrary. They argued that the reality on ground is that Nigeria cannot generate up 4,000 megawatts of electricity whereas South Africa generates close to 40,000 megawatts, there is high rate of unemployment in Nigeria, many factories have shut down, Nigeria’s refineries are not functioning at full capacity and the country has to rely on imported petroleum products, the nation’s roads are death traps, and Nigeria is ranked as one of the poorest nations by the World Bank and other global agencies.
On social network site, Twitter, more Nigerians lambasted Okonjo-Iweala. They reckon that the calculations were only theoretical. To some economists, the rebasing was a vainglorious exercise.
“In one week, Nigeria moved from one of the poorest, globally, to largest African economy, did a miracle happen?” asked NewsBytes.
“Well, I hope our minister, Okonjo-Iweala’s humble enough to admit the new GDP numbers won’t magically improve our lives. Only means government has better data to work with,” said Gbenga Olorunpomi.
According to Ife Adebayo, Okonjo-Iweala should quit her position as Finance Minister. “Maybe Iweala should return to her World Bank/International Monetary Fund jobs and let someone who knows that cost of food, shelter and healthcare are what matter, take charge,” he said.
Just Jude thinks it was a media stunt by the government. “Nigeria has over 100 million poor persons. Dear Iweala, your media campaign won’t change that.”
Adelaja King believes there is nothing to rejoice about just yet. “What is worth celebrating in a house where the active youths are rendered vegetables labour wise? What is the sense in this concocted GDP propaganda?” he asked.
Miz Cazorla wrote: “GEJ, I personally can’t celebrate until we all can feel the positive impact of our growth. There are still too many of our citizens living in poverty.”
Loads of responses have also poured in on our website and the NigerianEYE Facebook page: www.nigerianeye.com
How does this affect the poor man? We are still one of the poorest country. All we see is figures being exagerated. Rubbish. I run my own business on generator day in day out. Stop lying to us. Worried Nigerian asked
Anonymous said
Does this reduce poverty, joblessness etc?
Anonymous said
Please, can somebody tell me the bases of the Nigerian economy which has just been claimed the biggest in Africa by the F.G and juster-posing it with the realities on ground.Such as looking at the economy as an import based,per-capital income of an average Nigerian less than 1 dollar,high level of cost of production,high level of insecurity,etc. I beg who is fooling who ?
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