The Democratic Front (TDF) has accused former President Olusegun Obasanjo of hypocrisy after he alleged that President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms had pushed more Nigerians into poverty.
In a statement signed by its chairman, Mallam Danjuma Muhammad, and secretary, Chief Wale Adedayo, the group described comments by Obasanjo at the Financial Times Africa Summit 2026 in London as regrettable.
TDF alleged that Obasanjo’s administration depleted Nigeria’s foreign reserves by using foreign exchange to support the naira, instead of investing sufficiently in electricity and other infrastructure needed to boost production and productivity.
“It is regrettable that the former president failed to remember that his decision to waste the nation’s hard-earned foreign exchange in propping up the value of the naira forced 86 million Nigerians into multidimensional poverty in 2007,” the group said.
The organisation also criticised the multiple foreign-exchange windows operated under Obasanjo, claiming they encouraged arbitrage and the round-tripping of subsidised dollars, depleted the country’s reserves and weakened local production.
TDF further blamed Obasanjo’s privatisation programme for job losses and said it increased Nigeria’s dependence on costly imports, limiting the government’s ability to invest in electricity, agriculture, education, healthcare, infrastructure and industrialisation.
The group said it was “sad and embarrassing” for Obasanjo, who it accused of presiding over an economy that failed to grow in line with the population, to claim that Tinubu’s policies had worsened poverty.
TDF argued that Tinubu’s reforms had allowed the naira to find its market value and rejected Obasanjo’s description of the policy as a devaluation. It also accused the former president’s administration of worsening poverty through fuel and currency subsidies, leading to the creation of the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) in 2001.
The group claimed that Tinubu’s initiatives—including wage and pension increases, the payment of pension arrears, student loans, CREDICORP consumer loans, SMEDAN financing for small businesses and cash transfers to vulnerable Nigerians—had achieved more in three years than NAPEP did during its seven-year operation.
“We reject and debunk the former president’s claim that poverty has worsened under Tinubu as false and misleading,” TDF said, urging Nigerians to disregard what it described as Obasanjo’s politically motivated criticism.
The group also alleged that Obasanjo’s remarks were intended to boost the chances of his preferred candidate in the forthcoming presidential election.
