“The Cooking Pots Do Not Lie”: Atiku, Presidency Clash Over CBN Survey
Nigerian households have quietly withdrawn from the market for homes, vehicles and durable goods, and the Central Bank of Nigeria’s own survey instrument is now the document at the centre of a fierce political argument over whether the country’s economy is recovering or merely stabilising on paper.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, seized on the apex bank’s latest Household Expectations Survey in a statement issued on Saturday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, describing the findings as a “damning verdict” on the economic policies of President Bola Tinubu. He argued that an economy in which citizens are abandoning plans to acquire basic assets “cannot credibly be advertised as one on the path to prosperity.”
The numbers he cited are drawn from the CBN’s monthly household sentiment tracker. Buying conditions stood at 28.7 points for motor vehicles, 28.9 points for consumer durables and 30.0 points for buildings and landed property. Willingness to purchase was weaker still, at 18.7 points for vehicles and 19.2 points for buildings and landed property. The CBN benchmarks these indices against a 50 point threshold, below which a majority of respondents are judged to consider prevailing conditions unfavourable for major purchases. Every category has remained below that line throughout the review period.
The survey’s outlook indices tell a similar story. The reading for house purchases came in at negative 56.9, household appliances and other durables at negative 36.8, investment intentions at negative 35.7 and rent at negative 24.6. An earlier edition of the same survey had recorded even deeper negative readings, with houses at negative 63.8 and cars at negative 62.9, alongside buying condition scores of 24.7 for vehicles, 25.3 for consumer durables and 25.1 for buildings. Read side by side, the two editions suggest a modest thaw in sentiment rather than a reversal, since the indices remain roughly twenty points short of neutral.
Other findings from the survey add texture. Respondents put expected price changes at 23.3 points over the next three months and 25.0 points over six months, while 63.4 per cent said the economy would deteriorate if inflation accelerated beyond its current pace. On interest rates, 35.6 per cent expected bank lending rates to climb over the next three months, 57.2 per cent said they would prefer rates to fall, and 46.5 per cent conceded that higher rates may be needed to contain inflation. Across all periods covered, food remained the single largest expected household expenditure, followed by transportation, other household goods, education, electricity and water.
Atiku anchored his broader argument on food costs, citing the SBM Intelligence Jollof Index. The Q2 2026 edition of the index, titled “Rebasing, Redefining, and the Weather’s Toll on the Pot,” put the national average cost of preparing a pot of jollof rice for a family of five at ₦29,578 in June 2026, up 14.6 per cent from ₦25,798 in July 2025. The firm rebased the index this quarter, replacing turkey with chicken as the standard protein and adopting stricter ingredient measures across 13 markets in Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones and two cities in Ghana.
Measured over a decade, the index has climbed from ₦4,087 in July 2016 to ₦29,578, an increase of 624 per cent. Regional movements have been uneven. The South West has recorded a 708 per cent rise since July 2016 and the North Central 567 per cent, while over the year to June 2026 the Trade Fair market in Lagos rose 49.6 per cent, Calabar 36.3 per cent and Port Harcourt 18.2 per cent. SBM attributed much of the recent pressure to heavy rains, flooded roads, damaged farmland and delayed harvests, noting that tomato prices in some Bauchi markets more than tripled.
Set against the ₦70,000 national minimum wage signed into law in July 2024, which replaced the ₦30,000 floor that had stood since 2019, a single pot of jollof rice absorbs more than 40 per cent of a month’s statutory pay. Lagos State pays ₦85,000, while the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress have been pressing for a new floor of ₦154,000, with NLC President Joe Ajaero telling the union’s 2026 Rain School in Uyo that the current wage no longer meets workers’ basic needs.
“Government officials can celebrate GDP growth, foreign reserves and other statistics from air-conditioned conference rooms, but ordinary Nigerians have become unwilling economists, calculating every cup of rice, every litre of fuel and every transport fare before deciding what their families can afford,” Atiku said. “Between official statistics and empty cooking pots, the cooking pots do not lie.”
The Federal Government has consistently defended the removal of petrol subsidy and the liberalisation of the foreign exchange market as necessary corrections. Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, issued a point by point rebuttal on August 2, 2026, titled “Facts, Not Fear: A Point-by-Point Response to Atiku Abubakar on Nigeria’s Reform Journey,” in which he described the former Vice President’s assessment as anchored in 2024 conditions.
“It is curious that in the middle of 2026, the opposition’s principal economic argument remains anchored to developments in the 2024 fiscal year. Economies are dynamic. Reforms are processes, not events,” Onanuga said. He put dollar denominated GDP at about $377 billion, up from roughly $253 billion after the exchange rate adjustment, and naira GDP at ₦530 trillion from ₦314 trillion, while stating that debt service to revenue had fallen from nearly 100 per cent in December 2022 to below 60 per cent. On Atiku’s claim of a ₦7.98 trillion oil windfall, he replied flatly, “There is no such windfall of ₦7.98 trillion,” noting that crude production averaged about 1.6 million barrels per day against a projected 1.84 million, even as Brent averaged around $90 per barrel in the first half of 2026 against a benchmark of $64.85.
The headline indicators do show movement. CBN Governor Olayemi Cardoso told the 306th Monetary Policy Committee meeting that real GDP grew by 3.89 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, compared with 4.07 per cent in the preceding quarter, with the non-oil sector expanding 3.94 per cent while oil GDP growth slowed to 2.57 per cent from 6.79 per cent. He put gross external reserves at $52.52 billion as of July 17, up from $50.47 billion at end May, and told the Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions that reserves had risen 7.9 per cent from $48.88 billion in January. The MPC retained the Monetary Policy Rate at 26.5 per cent, with cash reserve requirements held at 45 per cent for deposit money banks and 16 per cent for merchant banks. The composite Purchasing Managers’ Index returned to expansion at 50.1 points in June from 49.6 in May.
Inflation, too, has come down sharply from its peak of about 34.80 per cent in late 2024. The National Bureau of Statistics put headline inflation at 15.91 per cent in June 2026, marginally below the 15.93 per cent recorded in May and far below the 25.29 per cent of June 2025. Yet food inflation moved the other way, rising to 17.52 per cent year on year from 16.96 per cent in May, with month on month food inflation accelerating to 3.75 per cent from 2.98 per cent. State level disparities are stark. Kogi recorded 53.02 per cent food inflation, Niger 43.83 per cent and Benue 40.83 per cent, while Katsina at 19.15 per cent, Rivers at 23.81 per cent and Imo at 24.60 per cent posted the slowest increases.
The gap between falling headline inflation and rising food prices is the crux of the dispute. Because food carries the heaviest weight in Nigerian household budgets, a moderating all items index can coexist comfortably with a kitchen under strain. Fuel costs illustrate the same tension. Petrol sold between about ₦1,265 and ₦1,310 per litre in Abuja and its environs in early August, with diesel between ₦1,700 and ₦1,800, before Dangote Refinery cut its gantry prices to ₦1,165 and ₦1,570 respectively. The World Food Programme has projected that about 35 million Nigerians could face acute food insecurity during the 2026 lean season, with more than 17 million in northern states already in crisis or worse.
Both sides are, in effect, reading different pages of the same ledger. The government points to reserves, growth, a firmer naira and a recapitalised banking sector that raised ₦4.65 trillion in fresh capital in March. The opposition points to survey indices that measure what households believe they can afford. Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, has himself signalled that the government intends to build a system for tracking poverty and household incomes, saying government cannot credibly claim reforms are working “without data showing their impact on poverty, income levels and living standards.”
That admission may prove decisive as 2027 approaches. Atiku, whose nomination as ADC candidate alongside running mate Rotimi Amaechi remains the subject of continuing litigation, has framed household purchasing power as the central test of governance.
“President Tinubu should stop governing Nigeria through PowerPoint economics. The real economy is the Nigerian family’s pocket, and that pocket is increasingly empty,” he said. “Before there is GDP, there must be dinner. Before there is prosperity, there must be purchasing power.”