Obinna DikeEsse

Dear President @officialABAT, whatever rewards are coming to our U-17 World Champions, please add one more: give each of them a scholarship to any university they choose. At 17 and under, they are still in their formative years. Football can carry them into the future. An academic scholarship lets them walk into that future better armed. Many people did not wish them or our country well in that final. They went out and won it anyway. We must celebrate them, and we should celebrate them in a way that lasts. Congratulations Mr President. Looking forward to seeing you lift that trophy, to the joy of every Nigerian that wishes our country well.

Nigeria is poor. That is an objective statement. Even the things you wrote after that projected the state of Nigeria’s poverty.  Your post opens by declaring Nigeria is not poor and ends by admitting Nigeria has not arrested extreme poverty. Both cannot be true. This is Peter Obi level contradiction.  A country is not rich because of what lies under its soil. It is rich because of what its people produce above it. By the measure that matters to the woman selling pepper at Mile 12, Nigeria is poor: 63 per cent of Nigerians, about 140 million people, were below the poverty line in 2025. Our income per head is around $1,250 a year. That is poverty.  Singapore was never a "barren rock." In 1965 its income per head was about $516, roughly level with Mexico and South Africa, and it was a busy British port. Singapore had no minerals at all. It is the strongest evidence against your post's claim. Resources did not make Singapore rich. Productivity did. Ethiopia is a strange choice of "no excuses" model. Its poverty rate rose from 33 per cent in 2016 to a projected 43 per cent in 2025, and it has been in debt distress since missing a Eurobond payment in December 2023. If Nigeria missed a Eurobond payment, you are your presidential candidate will be shouting that to the heavens.  Ethiopia has not arrested extreme poverty either. Fast growth is not the same as being rich. Aren’t you meant to be one of the smartest Obidients? Even objective numbers are tripping you? Ethiopia? Did you think you were replying someone in your herd? Ethiopia? Lol. The China figure of $113 per head in 1970 is correct. But China did not escape by announcing it was secretly rich. It admitted it was poor, then spent four decades building factories, roads and export industries. India's progress is real. Its extreme poverty fell to 5.3 per cent. But Nigeria is not alone at the bottom: the DRC and (your) Ethiopia sit with us among the four countries holding half of sub-Saharan Africa's extreme poor. The real danger in "Nigeria is not poor" is that it becomes the excuse. It tells Nigerians the wealth already exists and someone is just sitting on it. Politics then becomes a fight over sharing, not a project of producing. That’s exactly why none of those who want to replace President Tinubu have any plan on expanding our productivity. It’s all about how to waste the little there is.  About 1.6 million barrels a day at $65 is roughly $38 billion a year before any costs. Divide that by 230 million Nigerians and you get about $165 per person per year. Is that wealth?  You cannot fix what you misdiagnose. Nigeria is poor. But Nigeria does not have to stay poor.  As for Nord: 500 cars will not move GDP. Lol. Even at ₦50 million each, that is ₦25 billion, a rounding error in a ₦372.8 trillion economy. But a Nigerian factory making cars that Nigerians pay for is exactly how poor countries become rich. Make it 500,000. We are talking numbers, let’s get real please.  And this is my last response here. I cannot engage people who lie about bare facts for the sake of their uninformed audience or politics. Good day Aja.