Bwala Admits Tinubu’s Reforms Pushed More Nigerians Into Poverty, Says Progress Made
Daniel Bwala, Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Policy Communication, has acknowledged that more Nigerians fell into poverty following the economic reforms introduced by the administration, but said significant progress had been recorded since the reforms began.
Bwala made the disclosure on Wednesday during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, where he explained that the increase in poverty was partly a consequence of the economic adjustments undertaken by the Federal Government.
“Please let it be clear even to the opposition, the reason why you have this number of poor people and some of these doomsday analytics that people are giving is because we undertook a reform,” he said.
“There is no part of the world where you start a reform like that there will not be discomfort. More people went down to poverty, acknowledged, but since when the reform started to today, we have made marked progress which is what we have spent the last three years talking to Nigerians about.
“So, you cannot discount that even though there are quite a number of our population that are poor which we admit, but we have made progress so far.”
Speaking on the 2027 presidential election, Bwala expressed confidence that Tinubu would perform better than he did in the 2023 election, when he defeated Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party by 1.81 million votes and Peter Obi of the Labour Party by 2.69 million votes.
He added that “the margin of gap that President Bola Tinubu will give each and everyone of these candidates will be so much that you won’t believe it.”