Nigeria’s GDP statistics is fictitious – Kwankwaso

From Edwin Olofu, Kano

The result of rebasing Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), making the nation’s economy the largest in Africa, is fictitious and deceitful, Governor Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso of Kano state has alleged.

The governor, who made the assertion yesterday, while receiving a delegation of executive officers of African Democratic Congress, ADC, in his office at the Government House in Kano, therefore, advised the Federal government to be more practical and more sensitive to what is happening on the ground instead of concentrating on fiction.

“The economy that they claim to have grown is the economy of Abuja. Any practical economist will know that the figures they gave is not commensurate with what is truly on the ground. The figures they give are far from the truth.

“Go to the streets, you will see people hungry, depressed and impoverished. There is no food, no electricity, no security and there is poverty everywhere. You cannot talk of economic development where people are killed daily and people are sleeping with one eye open. Without peace, I am sure our economy cannot be the biggest in Africa”.

Continuing he added:” if you go to the streets and tell people that the nation’s economy has progressed, they will laugh at you. That is even if you are lucky that you are not beaten up and left with scars on your face”.

He argued that people in Nigeria, irrespective of their geographical areas, are angry that things are not working well primarily because of what he described as “a small number of people that are upstairs that are making sure that nothing trickles to the grassroots”.

Kwankwaso, therefore, urged the ADC to join hands with his party, the APC, to fight such injustice in 2015, adding that the two parties will have no option than to come together, as progressives, to move the nation forward.

Earlier, the spokesman of the delegation and National Organizing Secretary of the ADC, Alhaji Manu Ibrahim Ahmad, said the visit was to strengthen relationship between the party and Kano state government, under Kwankwaso, whose vision was identical with that of their party.

He said the ADC is appreciative of what Kwankwaso is doing to move Kano to the next level of development and is willing to collaborate with him for attainment of his future ambition.