By Olu Fasan
Trust Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s self-assured yet bumbling president. He will claw at any piece of seemingly good news. Recently, when the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, reported that Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP, grew to 3.19 per cent in the second quarter of this year, from 2.51 per cent at the same period last year, Tinubu was overly exultant.
His newspaper, The Nation, screamed on its front page: “Tinubu hails GDP surge, assures of stronger economic performance.” Surely, describing the anaemic and shallow GDP growth rate as a “surge” shows how Tinubu grasps at straws, denying reality. Interestingly, while Tinubu gloated about the GDP figure, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s two-time Finance Minister and current Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, WTO, lamented Nigeria’s perennially sluggish GDP growth rate at this year’s annual conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA. So, who is right?
