If you ever feel like you’re losing your mind while looking at your bank account, don’t worry, it’s not you; it’s the "official" statistics. We are currently living in a Nigeria where the government is trying to convince us that almost everyone has a job, while almost nobody has a dime.
According to the "magical" reports being pushed by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and supported by the Tinubu administration, Nigeria has an adult employment rate of 87.3%. On paper, we are beating countries like Egypt, Zambia, and even Botswana. If a private company tried to pitch this "87% success rate" to investors while their customers were starving, the CEO would be arrested for fraud. But in Nigeria, they call it "Renewed Hope."
Here is the trick they are playing on you, and it’s a slap in the face to every hardworking youth: Under the new rules, if you worked for just one hour in the last seven days, the government counts you as "employed."
Think about that for a second. If you helped a neighbor carry a bag of cement for 30 minutes on a Tuesday and they gave you ₦500 for a sachet of water, the Tinubu government records you in their books as a success story. You are officially part of the 87.3%. Never mind that ₦500 can’t buy a loaf of bread anymore. Never mind that you spent the other 167 hours of the week wondering where your next meal would come from. To the NBS, you are not a "struggling citizen"; you are a "statistic of progress."
The reality of this "book-cooking" was accidentally exposed by the government’s own Finance Minister, Wale Edun. He admitted that only 5% of Nigerians have more than ₦500,000 in their bank accounts. Let that number sink in. If 87% of us are "employed", why is it that nearly 95% of the country is living one small sickness or one flat tire away from poverty? If everyone is working, why is the marketplace so quiet? Why is consumption "flat"? It’s because "employment" in Tinubu’s Nigeria doesn't mean you have a career; it just means you are "nominally busy" while you slowly go broke.
This is the snake oil that the IMF and World Bank have been selling to our leaders for forty years: "Just change the definitions, control the media, and make the numbers look like progress." They want to show the world that their "reforms" are working, even if those reforms are burying the Nigerian people. They are using your hunger as a data point to prove that the "market" is balancing itself out.
We are being led by a government that cares more about what the world thinks of its spreadsheets than what Nigerians think of their empty pots. They have turned the core pillars of our society - labor, power, and currency - over to "market forces" that were designed to make a few people at the top unimaginably rich.
The 87.3% employment figure is a lie. It is a fairy tale told by people who haven't stepped into a local market in a decade. If you are working and still can't save a kobo, you aren't "employed", you are being exploited by a system that has mastered the art of hiding a crisis behind a decimal point.