Politician Adewole Adebayo is pressing President Bola Tinubu to explain his poverty record as a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) trend measure shows an increase ahead of Nigeria’s 2027 election.
Adebayo made the appeal in an Oct. 26 interview on Arise News’ Morning Show, according to the outlet. He criticized a 90-day cost-of-living plan endorsed four days earlier by Nigeria’s National Economic Council (NEC), saying, “90 days is a short-term plan.” Arise News reported that he wants the administration to explain what it inherited, what it has done and what comes next.
Adebayo advocated a yearlong effort to increase farm production, improve security, create jobs and lower energy costs, Arise News reported. The outlet also reported his claim that poverty indicators had worsened since Tinubu took office.
The NEC endorsed the 90-day plan on Oct. 22 after a presentation by Finance Minister Taiwo Oyedele at its 161st virtual meeting, chaired by Vice President Kashim Shettima, according to a Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation release. The priorities include making food more affordable, aligning taxes, finishing high-impact projects, easing investment bottlenecks and providing regulated household support. Oyedele said the government aims to bring headline inflation and interest rates into single-digit territory by 2027, the release said. It does not specify funding for the plan or set milestones for its priorities.
UNDP’s 2026 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index gives a harmonized trend estimate of 33.0% of Nigeria’s population, or 72.211 million people, in survey year 2021, rising to 38.7%, or 90.070 million, in 2024. A separate 2024 estimate in the tables is 48.7%, or 113.316 million; it comes from a different series. Because the trend compares years before and after Tinubu’s May 2023 inauguration, it cannot assign the change to his administration.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) lists Adebayo as the Social Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. The party says on its website that he was expelled at a meeting and convention on May 20, 2026, and was never nominated; it has asked INEC to review its published records. INEC schedules the presidential and National Assembly elections for Jan. 16, 2027.
