Press Statement

ActionAid Nigeria (AAN) is deeply concerned by recent public remarks made by the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, in which he stated that he does not see the level of hunger Nigerians say they are experiencing, citing his personal observations and conversations with people who work for him as the basis for this claim. This is a careless and dismissive standard of evidence for anyone speaking on behalf of the presidency. It is contradicted by the daily reality of millions of Nigerians, and by AAN’s own documented experience and community engagement across Nigeria.

This claim that hunger is not visible is also contradicted by the spokesperson’s own words later in the same interview, in which he acknowledged that a crate of eggs that cost 600 naira a few years ago now costs several thousand naira. As of today, a crate of eggs actually costs between 6,000 and 8,500 naira, several times higher than the figure he cited. This is consistent with official data: the National Bureau of Statistics reported that Nigeria’s food inflation rate stood at 16.96 percent year-on-year in May 2026, up from 16.68 percent in April 2026, driven by rising prices for staples including onions, maize, melon, yam, cassava, crayfish, pepper, tomatoes, wheat, and plantain. He did not dispute that the real value of wages has collapsed since the devaluation of the naira, nor that labour unions maintain that incomes would need to roughly quadruple to match the purchasing power Nigerian workers had a decade ago. It is not credible for a government spokesperson to deny the scale of hardship Nigerians face while, in the same breath, confirming the price increases that define it. Nigerians do not need to be told their hunger is not real by the very officials whose own statements prove otherwise.

Communities AAN works with across Nigeria, including women smallholder farmers, informal traders, and households in displacement and conflict-affected areas, continue to report that food, transport, healthcare, and basic services are increasingly out of reach. These are not perceptions manufactured by political opposition or amplified by social media, as has been suggested. They are documented realities reflected in market prices, in food inflation data published by the government’s own statistics agency, in school enrolment and retention figures, and in the day-to-day decisions families make about what they can and cannot afford to eat.

ActionAid Nigeria is equally concerned by the presidency’s handling of insecurity data in the same interview. Independent, credible monitor, Nigeria Watch, a long-running academic violence-monitoring project, recorded 12,954 violent deaths across Nigeria in 2025 alone, and found that kidnapping-related fatalities rose from 425 in 2024 to 747 in 2025, with the number of states affected by rural banditry increasing from nine to sixteen over the same period. Regional data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project similarly placed Nigeria as the deadliest country in West Africa in the first half of 2025, accounting for 5,768 conflict-related deaths, or 44.5 percent of all fatalities recorded across the region in that period. These are increases, not the decreases the presidency has claimed, and they come from named, independent sources using transparent and published methodology, not from a single internal figure that has not been made available for scrutiny. Nigerians living with insecurity deserve a government that engages honestly with this evidence, using one clearly stated methodology, rather than citing improving statistics that shift in basis depending on the audience or the moment.

"Not everybody has the opportunity to work closely with the presidency, as Mr Onanuga does. That privilege comes with a responsibility to tell the truth and to know what is actually happening to Nigerians, not to assume that because hardship is not visible from where he sits, it does not exist," said Andrew Mamedu, Country Director of ActionAid Nigeria. "The tragedy is that Nigerians are no longer making choices about how to improve their lives; they are making choices about which necessity they can afford to forgo. Families are skipping meals to pay transport fares, avoiding hospitals because they cannot afford treatment, and compromising their children's education because survival has become the priority. When people are forced to trade nutrition for transportation, healthcare for rent, or education for food, poverty is no longer a statistic. It is a daily reality steadily diminishing their quality of life and future prospects.

In a community in the Lekki area, a family told our researchers that their area has no junior secondary school, so children must walk to a school in a farther community. A young boy there could not afford regular transport fare, so he usually walked to school with other children. On the days his parents could spare any transport money, he added it to his feeding money instead, so he could eat properly. Shortly after recovering from an illness, he walked to school as usual, collapsed, and died. This was not a medical mystery. It was Nigeria failing a child in every way that mattered until it cost him his life. Mr Onanuga should ask and meet the people who will tell him the truth," Dr Mamedu said.

ActionAid Nigeria demands that:

• Government officials and spokespersons speaking on behalf of the presidency to stop dismissing or downplaying the cost-of-living crisis as a matter of personal perception and instead engage with it as the documented and urgent reality confronting millions of Nigerians. Public statements that suggest hardship is exaggerated or non-existent are not only disconnected from the lived experiences of citizens but can be perceived as a slap in the face to families who are making daily sacrifices to survive.
• Government at all levels to implement and strengthen measures that address the root causes of rising living costs while providing immediate protection for vulnerable households. This should include investments in local food production, improved transport and logistics infrastructure, and robust social protection and social security programmes that reflect the current realities faced by low-income households. Economic relief measures must be developed, implemented, and periodically reviewed in direct consultation with communities most affected by food inflation, currency devaluation, and rising transportation, healthcare, and education costs to ensure that interventions are responsive, targeted, and impactful.

ActionAid Nigeria alongside other Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) reaffirm their commitment to working constructively with government, communities, and other stakeholders to identify solutions that improve the welfare of Nigerians. We will continue to document and amplify the realities of the communities we serve, and to hold all public officeholders accountable to the standard of honesty, empathy, and evidence that governance demands.

EDITOR’S NOTE

ActionAid Nigeria, a social justice non-governmental organisation working to eradicate poverty and all forms of injustice in Nigeria. We are an affiliate member of the ActionAid International Federation with a presence in 45 countries. AAN works in solidarity with people living in poverty and exclusion to achieve social justice, gender equality, and poverty eradication towards achieving a just, equitable, and sustainable world in which every person enjoys the right to a life of dignity, freedom from poverty and all forms of oppression.

Contact:

Oluwakemi Akinremi-Segun | Communications Coordinator | ActionAid Nigeria

Tel: +234 (0) 809 207 6904 | +234 (0) 812 888 8826

Email: Oluwakemi.AkinremiSe@actionaid.org | Info.nigeria@actionaid.org