₦airaland Forum

The Gross Domestic Product is a common word that countries around the world like to showcase as an improvement or successful outcomes of economic policies. Currently, the 10 richest African countries are South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, Morocco, Ethiopia, Kenya, Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, and Tanzania.

At the turn of this decade, Nigeria was the number one economy in Africa. This result shows how much we have gone down, and others are taking over. We are in the week of Nigeria’s independence celebration at 65, still with ‘hope for a better tomorrow’ to show for the years!

Last week, we were informed that our GDP has been growing in the last three or four quarters, and the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics affirmed that using the recently rebased format, the economy actually grew by 4.23 per cent year-on-year in real terms in the second quarter of 2025. At the same time, a report also came out from the Central Bank that Nigeria’s external reserves were US$42.05bn on September 19, 2025.

These figures appearing at this time gave the impression that the government is looking for ways of justifying a lavish 65th birthday with some dollar gifts to those in the executive and legislature, whom they feel are the people who made sacrifices to achieve the ‘feat’. I hope not. We will look at more relevant data, like the Human Development Index and the World Happiness Index, for measures of growth and development.

My opinion of Nigerian government managers, whether at the federal or state level, and possibly local government, when they stabilise, is that they make policies with the hope that if it works out successfully to bring in some huge returns, it should be for spending on personal comfort rather than for re-investment in the economy to generate more incomes, employment and consequently economic growth and development.

That is why, for this government, after two years, the huge returns from crude oil subsidy removal and currency devaluation have not filtered down to the citizens to ease the hardship engineered by those policies.

But we have seen affluence in the state of living of the politicians, and they flaunt their wealth in the sight of the citizens. They travel around the world with their families for pleasure in the name of vacation, health tourism, and send their children to study abroad, making sure the graduation pictures of those children are published in the media for all to see.

They import expensive or exotic official vehicles in the form of SUVs instead of patronising our local vehicle plants to assist them in expanding and growing. They share foreign currencies as holiday gifts among themselves, as if we spent such currencies in the Nigerian markets. An indication of the need to travel abroad for leisure.

The current GDP growth is attributed to a rise in oil output with relatively stable demand in the international market, due to the instability in the Middle East. So, the economy is on a knife-edge. The decrease in food inflation, which has been driving inflation in the country in the last months, was caused by the harvesting period and improvement in the security situation in the country, while significant increases in the external reserves are deliberate efforts at presenting a solid economy to our potential lenders. They are all good outcomes of strategies. Hopefully, they are sustainable. Albeit the hardship continues with the populace.

Every year, the United Nations publishes the Human Development Index, exposing citizens’ conditions in all countries in the world. The index ranks countries according to their successes in fulfilling the basic needs of their citizens over a period, usually one year.

The HDI was created by the United Nations Development Programme, one of the major institutions of the United Nations. The HDI was constructed to underscore the importance of judging a country’s well-being and the capabilities of its people, not just by its economic growth alone.

It is more robust to combine health, education, and living standards as measures of development than GDP, which is price multiplied by quantity of output. Thus, the HDI offers a more comprehensive picture of a country’s overall advancement and development, and we use this to evaluate our present economic situation in the second part.

The Human Development Index provides a more comprehensive picture of a country’s overall advancement and development, which we use to evaluate Nigeria’s current economic situation. The HDI assesses the average achievements of a country in the areas of health, education and income per capita.

These three are justifiably regarded as fundamental dimensions of human development. For health, a long and healthy life is measured by life expectancy at birth, while access to knowledge or education is measured by years of schooling and literacy level, and a decent standard of living is measured by Gross National Income or Income per capita.

A mathematical average of the data collected is worked out to give a single number between zero and one. The closer a country’s index or mark to one, the greater the human development, and the nearer to zero the figure arrived at, the worse the human development. Countries in the world are ranked according to their scores.

According to countryeconomy.com, the HDI for Nigeria for
-2020/2021; 0.542,
-2021/2022; 0.548,
-2022/2023; 0.560,
-2023/2024; 0.548,
-2024/2025; 0.548.

The world average is 0.744 points. The HDI for Ghana in 2021 was 0.600; in 2022, it was 0.602, and in 2023 it was 0.628. In 2022, Seychelles had the highest HDI in Africa, followed by Mauritius, Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia with scores from 0.80 to 0.73 points.

Actually, Nigeria is missing from the 10 most developed countries in Africa, according to the HDI. They are Seychelles (0.802), Mauritius (0.796), Libya (0.746), Algeria (0.745), Tunisia (0.732), Egypt (0.728), South Africa (0.717), and Botswana (0.708). Nigeria has consistently ranked in the 150th position out of 190 countries. The position for 2025 is estimated to be around 161st out of 193 countries, based on the 2024 report. Always among the lowly ranked countries

There is also the World Happiness Report, also known as the World Happiness Index. The factors considered include GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and perception of corruption. Interviews and the administration of questionnaires are used as instruments, and the data are statistically analysed before reports are released.

[i]Nigeria ranked 105th out of 147 countries in the 2025 World Happiness Report, while it ranked 102nd out of 143 countries in 2024. Nigeria was in 95th position in 2023. Worsening conditions every succeeding year! Within Africa, Nigeria ranked 10th in the 2025 report. The report is published annually by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solution Network. It evaluates countries on self-reported life evaluations. The current report thus shows that we are going down.[/i]

So, the noise about growing GDP, rise in external reserves, and government revenue from taxes and levies, as well as falling inflation, has not had a positive effect on the citizens. This is because the financial outcomes of the initial policies were controlled by the political class and used for their own well-being.

The American economy, and indeed, the world economy in 2008, when President Barack Obama took office as the 44th President of the United States, was worse than the 2023 Nigerian economy. There was a global depression caused by home ownership activities in the US at that time, but President Obama came on board and took the necessary steps for economic revival. He intervened in the industrial sector, bailing out big ailing industries that were about to collapse through government loans.

He breathed life into them, and within two years, they started paying back the loans. In his first year in office, he generated 134,055 non-farm employment, higher than the presidents before him. He knew what to do and did it for the benefit of America. Our President knew what to do, but did it for his political class, paving the way for easy acceptance by all political parties.

He gave the huge revenues that accrued from the desirable policy actions to the state governors, who invariably started stocking funds in foreign currencies for the 2027 elections instead of investing them in people, waking up state industries from a coma, and investing in agriculture.

The executive and the legislature started the gigantic projects of road construction, refurbishing of buildings at humongous prices, importation of vehicles, airplanes, and other exotic items that can be produced locally, and all sorts of travels with huge contingents. All the money generated internally was spent abroad, generating employment in those beneficiary economies.

The government was looking for foreign investments when it should have first encouraged local businesses and revived public investments through credit interventions, monitoring, and public-private partnerships. It was the initial financial support provided by the government through NNPC that created the Dangote Refinery of today, employing thousands of Nigerians.

That would have been the first level of employment generation and improved incomes for the citizens and government. It would have secured future funds to construct roads, buy airplanes, renovate buildings, et cetera.

Our HDI and WHI indices would have subsequently shown improvement. The GDP will rise both in real and nominal terms. Tax payment and tax revenue would have increased from production rather than rental activities. Inflation will naturally reduce as production and output increase, and Nigerians will truly smile rather than suffering and smiling we are used to.

Up to the 1980s, we were producing a lot of inputs for industrial and home use. The companies have folded up, but some can be revived or reinvented. We were driving locally assembled cars like Peugeot, Volkswagen, trucks, buses, tractors, all produced in different parts of the country. Vono in Lagos was fabricating leather seats for vehicles and desks for schools, among other products. Batteries were produced in Ibadan and Ijebu-Ode, Bauchi was the home of tractors, while Kaduna and Lagos were the homes of textiles.

The Dunlop and Micheline firms were known for tyre production in Lagos and old Bendel State. In the eastern part of the country, we have production of buses and other lorries. Some of these businesses are still there, asking for assistance to recover and to expand.

Currently, the money we pay to service debts is three times more than the budget for education and about six times more than the health budget. Happiness is far from a country that treats education and health with levity. It is not about TELFund, which is desirable and commendable as it is, and will continue to assist the poor to get their children educated locally.

But it is about learning environment, learning equipment, and the condition of the service providers, the human beings rendering the teaching jobs who need good remuneration, continued in-service training, and proper networking with their colleagues in other countries and continents.

It is not about building more hospitals but about establishing more hospitals and making the existing ones provide the required services with advanced equipment and treating the medical personnel as a special species that keep other human resources sound and healthy to continue production. It is not too late to restart economic engineering now, but further delay is dangerous.

According to countryeconomy.com, the HDI for Nigeria for
-2020/2021; 0.542,
-2021/2022; 0.548,
-2022/2023; 0.560,
-2023/2024; 0.548,
-2024/2025; 0.548.

The world average is 0.744 points. The HDI for Ghana in 2021 was 0.600; 2022 - 0.602, 2023 - 0.628. In 2022, Seychelles had the highest HDI in Africa, followed by Mauritius, Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia with scores from 0.80 to 0.73 points.

Actually, Nigeria is missing from the 10 most developed countries in Africa. Nigeria has consistently ranked in the 150th position out of 190 countries. The position for 2025 is estimated to be around 161st out of 193 countries, based on the 2024 report. Always among the lowly ranked countries.

According to the HDI.
-Seychelles (0.802),
-Mauritius (0.796),
-Libya (0.746),
-Algeria (0.745),
-Tunisia (0.732),
-Egypt (0.728),
-South Africa (0.717),
-Botswana (0.708).

That negative interpretation is my concern here, and it’s premised on buhari’s support for the election of Bola tinubu as nigeria’s next president. It concerns me because I’m fully convinced that a tinubu presidency would not only destabilise nigeria internally, it would damage nigeria globally, making it a big laughing stock, a butt of dark international jokes!

Truth is, next year’s presidential election will have huge long-term implications, its outcome will affect nigeria for decades. Therefore, no patriotic Nigerian should sit on the fence; that patriotism is what underpins this intervention. To be sure, the presidential election should be as much about character as manifesto.

The presidency is too serious an office to be invested in someone with serious integrity deficit. Those ignoring character and integrity should remember the Turkish proverb: “When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.”

Racoon:
Economic shocks that are not working but a disguise borrowing conduit pipeline for executive, legislative and judicial corruption. Nigerian is finished with these fellas @ the helms of affairs. Nothing has and will ever work with a man like Tinubu in government.

omoredia:
Hehe apc is now giving nigerians the same statistics that they said nigerians wouldn't eat lol 😆 😂 deceivers

garykoeman:
Hater will always dug up something negative to dish out.

@PeterObi is better than @officialABAT both as a governor and a businessman.

If Peter Obi had the revenue and FG infrastructure of Lagos, he would have truly turned Anambara more than Tinubu left Lagos........

"Even Peter Obi is ahead of Atiku Abubakar.......ahead of him in terms of capacity to make decisions. Keyamo said Tinubu increased Lagos’s IGR.
True. But much more than that, Tinubu increased Lagos’ debt.

Tinubu met a debt of less than $200 million and left a debt of billions of dollars. Lagos alone owes 6% of Nigeria’s external debt and approximately 4% of her domestic debt.

Tinubu’s debt overshot his IGR, which is a net loss for Lagos. Besides, with AlphaBeta, are we sure the IGR got to the coffers of the Lagos Government, or to private hands?

Racoon:
This is Nigeria under the Tinubu balablu first class certificate racketeering CSU graduate. Nigeria kept on going abysmal in every indices of human, economic and global development

fergie001:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5v-F81hNTs

The Permanent Secretary, Office of Drainage Services and Water Resources in Lagos State, Mahmood Adegbite, has said that people drilling borehole in the Lekki axis of the state is probably drinking ‘’shit water.”

While speaking at a stakeholders meeting in the state recently, Adegbite noted that contaminated boreholes in Lekki pose health risk and added that treatment of waste water would eradicate any form of disease that may arise from it.

He said, “On waste water treatment, I will say that everyone digging borehole within the Lekki axis is probably drinking what I will call ‘shit water.’

https://punchng.com/video-everyone-digging-borehole-in-lekki-is-probably-drinking-shit-water-lagos-govt/?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwMABDJjbGNrAwAEK2V4dG4DYWVtAjExAAEewOd7728C0FSKQJNWar4yKRxNpNKt1owSlw47y57FKAux2QxvQL24Iu18rtw_aem_3kB5Sd2GjpdqjN6zFuIs7w

Racoon:
This is Nigeria under the Tinubu balablu first class certificate racketeering CSU graduate. Nigeria kept on going abysmal in every indices of human, economic and global development

Bluntemperor:
Mr Raccoon, should Rest,as he has nothing than Criticism of Tinubu from Day 2 of the Govt- but why ?
They now have Space on Nairaland Forum and if you talked too much,they yanked off your messages,as usual.

It is becoming hates and Bitterness for them to see anything good here because they are on Social Media group - not to see anything good but condemnation - but why- they always have their negative reasons.

For Raccoon,just look at the States you are comparing with Nigeria- some of them are not up to Shomolu and Bariga Local Govt together,for except Egypt and South Africa 🌍,which have stable Economy - which other Countries did you compared or is it Ghana - that already rebased their Cedi in Dollars ($) - I don't understand o?

fuckJones:
(A case study of Nigeria citizens & their elected oppressors).

During the Soviet dictatorship of Joseph stalin. He was a brutal dictator with mind of his own. On one fateful day, stalin came to Politburo meeting with a live chicken. Standing in front of audience, He started to pluck the feathers of the live chicken off one by one. The chicken trembled in pain, blood tricking out of its pores. It gave out grievous cries, but stalin being a cruel dictator continued without remorse plucking the feathers out until the chicken was completely Unclad. After which, he threw the chicken on the ground. The Unclad chicken was staggering in pain. stalin goes into his pocket and from his pockets, he took out some chicken food and started to throw it at the poor & hapless creature. The poor chicken in pain started eating and stalin started walking towards his seat. As he walked away, he kept dropping some feeds on the floor & the chicken followed him and sat feeding from his feet.

Joseph stalin then turned to members of his political party leadership. He said, "This chicken represents the people". "You must disempower them, brutalise them, beat them up, starve them and then leave them". "If you do this, go into your pocket & give them peanuts when they are in that helpless and desperate situation, they will blindly follow you for the rest of their life, worshiping you". "They will think you are a hero forever. They will forget that, you're responsible for their sorrowful situation in the first place." Breath taking, isn't it ?

Now! Take a look at all the people some Nigerians are busy defending on social media. Take a look at those they call their heroes. They are the same people who plunged Nigeria into the situation she is. They are the same people who are responsible for their predicaments. Did you see the numbers of people that throng to Saraki's House during this Sallah period to go collect peanuts? People trooping to Bola Ahmed Tinubu Foundation offices to collect branded One kilo bag of Rice & Noddles. Did you see the number of people of all ages who troop out to welcome Ex- convict James Ibori to South South! Do you see the number of handle mop following obi as if he is a seat? what of the one following dino malaye?

Your guess is as good as mine. Nigerians kill those they should defend and defend those they should kill! Pass to all your contacts & let your Political & Religion Leaders read, understand & digest.

Racoon:
https://punchng.com/gdp-hdi-and-nigerias-economic-growth-1/

https://punchng.com/gdp-hdi-and-nigerias-economic-growth-2/

anonimi:
Why is this blunt emperor labouring in vain to divert attention from Tinubu and APC failure by talking about the population of the countries?

Are we 2/3rd wealthy, prosperous with government services and utilities including law and order like America?

How do we compare with China and India on HDI

>>>
>>>

Bluntemperor:
Absolute rubbish talk!

I'm an economist,Banker and I look at deep things,not nonsense that some of you make here because of one political afflictions or the other.
For your information,I'm not a politician,so no one pays my bills but stop distribution Falsehoods because your Party lost elections.

President Tinubu does not need validation,not even when Buhari was around,so everything as long as you people are concerned is not Good.

That is what liers peddle all the time!
Just Facts and TRUTH!

thisweekng:
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy Chief Olawale Edun has said the last time Nigeria’s economy looked stable was about a decade ago.

He made this statement during his maiden press conference as Minister of Finance where he outlined President Bola Tinubu’s vision, agenda and strategy for the economy.

He said, “I think as we all know, we are not where we should be. The economy is barely growing above the rate of population growth.

“But it was not always so, and I think in trying to look at the way forward, if we now have a situation of slow growth, double-digit inflation, weak/depreciating exchange rate, as well as security concerns that are resulting in an economy that is not growing and not taking Nigerians out of poverty.

“If we think back to the last time when the economy was stable- when it was growing, when inflation was low, and the interest rate was affordable, that period was about a decade ago. Growth was about 6% in 2013 and 2014.”
Private sector to drive the economy

https://nairametrics.com/2023/09/01/the-last-time-nigerias-economy-was-stable-was-about-a-decade-ago-wale-edun/