Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Nigeria's finance minister and some other top officials came out yesterday to reveal that Nigeria is now the biggest economy in Africa. As far as I was concerned, that is news for the birds as long as more than half of Nigerian still live in poverty, and even the middle class have to provide their own water and electricity. I'm glad that President Goodluck Jonathan is not dancing all over the place with the news. He shared the following on his official Facebook page;
Yesterday, our Gross Domestic Product was rebased to give an accurate picture of where we are as a nation. I am glad to report to you that Nigeria is officially the largest economy in Africa with a Gross Domestic Product of $510 billion which also places us as the 26th largest economy in the world.
This feat is a collective achievement of all Nigerians particularly when you take into
account the fact that our Per Capita Income had increased by over 60% from $1091 in 2009 to $1700 in 2013, prior to the rebasing.
While this calls for celebration, I personally cannot celebrate until all Nigerians can feel the positive impact of our growth. There are still too many of our citizens living in poverty.
Three years ago, I was asked to define Transformation and I said "Transformation in my view simply means taking what you have and making the best of it and in so doing produce results that can bring about a paradigm shift". That positive paradigm shift, as occurred yesterday, is still a work in progress.
Regardless of our present challenges, our place as a nation at the table of greatness is assured. GEJ.
He would be stupid to celebrate such a useless statistic. let Okonjo Iweala be fooling herself with all these numbers and figures. History will not remember her kindly at this rate.
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