The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 general election, Peter Obi, has slammed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, accusing his administration of using manipulated statistics to conceal the deepening economic crisis in the country.
In a statement posted on his X handle on Monday, the former Anambra State governor recalled Tinubu’s 2022 campaign remark, where the now-president dismissed Obi’s reliance on economic data, saying, “Na statistics we go chop? All I want is to put food on the table of Nigerians.”
Nearly two years into Tinubu’s tenure, Obi said that promise remains unfulfilled, with millions of Nigerians slipping deeper into poverty and hunger.
“Today, Nigeria is classified as one of the hungriest nations in the world. Millions of Nigerians do not know where their next meal will come from,” Obi stated.
He accused the Tinubu-led administration of feeding the public “wrong statistics” to paint a false picture of economic stability. Obi pointed to questionable unemployment rates, inaccurate inflation figures, and a controversial GDP rebasing as examples of what he described as “data manipulation” aimed at deceiving the masses.
“These wrong figures are not helping anyone. They are masking the real suffering going on in Nigerian households,” he said.
Obi’s criticism adds to mounting concerns over the country’s economic direction, with food prices, inflation, and unemployment hitting record highs.