VIDEO: Tinubu’s reforms pushed more Nigerians into poverty but we’ve made progress — Daniel Bwala

The Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Policy Communication, Daniel Bwala, has acknowledged that the administration’s economic reforms pushed more Nigerians into poverty, while insisting that the measures have produced significant progress.

Bwala spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday while defending policies introduced since Tinubu assumed office in 2023.

According to Channels Television, the reforms included the removal of petrol subsidy and unification of the foreign exchange market, measures that contributed to increases in transportation, logistics and production costs.

“Please let it be clear even to the opposition, the reason why you have this number of poor people and some of these doomsday analytics that people are giving is because we undertook a reform.

“There is no part of the world where you start a reform like that there will not be discomfort. More people went down to poverty, acknowledged, but since when the reform started to today, we have made marked progress which is what we have spent the last three years talking to Nigerians about.

“So, you cannot discount that even though there are quite a number of our population that are poor which we admit, but we have made progress so far,” Bwala said.

President Tinubu had also said in his October 1 Independence Day address that the country had reached a turning point after three years of economic reforms.