Former Anambra State Governor and Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, Peter Obi, has accused President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of manipulating economic statistics in a bid to mislead Nigerians about the true state of the country’s economy.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Obi criticized the Tinubu administration for what he described as the deliberate use of false data to paint a rosier picture of Nigeria’s deteriorating living conditions.

“In November 2022, while campaigning in Delta State, the then APC Presidential Candidate, Bola Tinubu, now the President, berated the other Presidential Candidate (Peter Obi), he was ashamed to call his name, saying ‘Na statistics we go chop all I want is to put food on the table of Nigerians’.

“Now, 2 years into his 4-year tenure, Nigeria is classified as one of the hungriest nations in the world, with millions of Nigerians not knowing where their next meal will come from.

“President Tinubu is now overfeeding Nigerians with wrong Statistics from wrong unemployment figures, wrong inflation figures, and now GDP debasing, all to put a positive spin on our deteriorating economic and household conditions,” Obi wrote.

The former presidential candidate noted further, “Governance is not a rock science, it’s not a gamble, like I have always reiterated, it requires sincerity of purpose, character, competence, capacity, and compassion.”

Obi’s criticism comes amid mixed signals from national and international data sources.

Nigeria is home to 19% of the extremely poor population in sub-Saharan Africa, the highest share across the region, according to the World Bank’s April 2025 Africa’s Pulse report.

This indicates that the average price level rose at a faster rate in June compared to May 2025.

This is not the first time the former governor is raising concerns about the worsening socio-economic situation in the country.

In April 2025, he said Nigeria has more poor people than China, Indonesia, and Vietnam combined.