Over the last few years many of his admirers have taken on Dr. Adesina, wanting him to contest for public office, so as to enable him join forces with other like minded Technocrats to correct all the perceived ills plaguing the country.
That is the big question many political watchers are asking right now. Will Dr. Akunwunmi Adesina, the President of the African Development Bank Group, join the presidential race come 2027?
For sometime now, the rumour mill has been agog with the rumours of the possibility his running.
Although Dr. Adesina has not said a word about it, the rumour has refused to go away.
We hear that Dr. Adesina whose term will end soon has been under intense pressure from influential and well meaning Nigerians who would like him to take a shot at the Presidency.
We gathered that despite all these pressure, Dr. Adesina has kept mute. We hear he has told all those who care to listen, privately, that he is not ready for Politics now.
Over the last few years many of his admirers have taken on Dr. Adesina, wanting him to contest for public office, so as to enable him join forces with other like minded Technocrats to correct all the perceived ills plaguing the country. They cite as example, the good work he has done not only at the ADB but as Minister for Agriculture.
It was a recent comment he made that re-opened that debate. A few weeks back, he made a statement that got Bayo Onanuga the Special Adviser to the President on Information & Strategy to promptly respond to him, that Adesina was wrong in his analysis.
The Presidency said it does not consider Adesina, a Political threat to the Bola Tinubu administration.
“As a politician, I don’t consider Dr. Akinwumi a threat to this president or to our political party, the All Progressives Congress,” Bayo Onanuga, disclosed when he appeared on TVC’s ‘Beyond the Headlines’ Show that evening.
He added, “I don’t think he is a political threat. I said I was surprised that he made what I would consider as a non sequitur kind of argument or kind of conclusion.”
“In Latin, you say it doesn’t follow; that, because GDP has fallen in 2025 so it means per capita income has fallen in 2025 does not mean that life, necessarily, was better in 1960 than now. That was the point I was making.”
On May 2, Adesina jolted an Abuja policy forum when he declared that Nigeria’s GDP per capita has collapsed from/ $1,847 at independence in 1960 to about $824 today, insisting this meant “Nigerians are now significantly worse off than they were 64 years ago.”
He argued that shrinking income per head exposed the “depth of poverty and low human development outcomes” that must be tackled if the country is to reap its demographic dividend.
Adesina’s remarks drew rebuttal from the Presidency, which accused the AfDB chief of relying on “grossly inaccurate” figures.
It said archival World Bank data put Nigeria’s 1960 GDP per capita at just $93, not nearly two thousand dollars, making any straight line comparison with today’s estimate misleading.
“Adesina should know that GDP per capita is not the only criterion used to determine whether people live better lives,” Onanuga wrote in an earlier reaction, adding that such analysis must consider improvements in life expectancy, schooling and infrastructure.
The presidential aide also suggested the AfDB boss “spoke like a politician,” arguing that the Tinubu administration is expanding rail, roads and social programmes that did not exist in 1960 and therefore cannot be captured by a single income metric.
He maintained that, adjusted for purchasing power and quality of life indicators, “Nigerians are certainly not worse off” than at independence. There was also a remark he made recently where he said he is available to serve his country at any level.
Those calling on Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, the 8th elected President of the African Development Bank Group to contest, base their arguments on his superlative performances in public office.
Lets tell you a little about him. He was first elected to the position on May 28, 2015, by the Bank’s Board of Governors at its Annual Meetings held in Abidjan, Cote d’ivoire, and historically unanimously re-elected in 2020:
He is a globally renowned development economist and agricultural development expert, with more than 30 years of international experience. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics (First Crass Honors) from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Nigeria, in 1981. He wasthe first student to obtain a First-Class Honors in Agricultural Economics in the history of the University.
He holds a Master’s degree (1985) and a PhD in Agricultural Economics (1988) from Purdue University, USA, where he won the Outstanding Ph.D thesis award for that year. Dr. Adesina won the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Social Science Fellowship in 1988, which launched him into his international career.
A bold reformer, as the Minister of Agriculture in Nigeria from 2011-2015, Dr Adesina turned the Agriculture sector of Nigeria around within 4 vears, Under his tenure.Nigeria ended 40 years of corruption in the fertilizer sector by developing and implementing an innovative electronic wallet system, which directly provided 15 miillion farmers with subsidized farm inputs at scale using their mobile phones. The initiative effectivelv ended fertilizer corruption and transformed the lives of farmers and communities.
A firm believer in private sector-led growth, Dr Adesina radicallv changed the perception of Agriculture in Nigeria from that of subsistence toa viable business that successfully attracted $5.6 billion in private sector investments. He also led financing initiatives to support Youth engagement in agriculture and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Ultimately, under his leadership, Nigeria’s food production expanded by an historic additional 21 million metric tons.
Prior to his appointment as Minister of Agriculture, Dr Adesina was the Vice President (Policy and Partnerships) ofthe Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), where he led several bold and innovative policy and finance initiatives that leveraged over $4 billion in Bank Finance Commitments to Africa’s Agriculture sector. Working with African Heads of State and Ministers of Finance, leaders in the commercial banking industry and Central Bank Governors across several African countries, Dr Adesina successfully led one of the largest global efforts to leverage domestic bank finance for the Agricultural sector.
Prior to joining AGRA in 2008, he had served as Associate Director and Regional Director for the Southern Africa Office of the Rockefeller Foundation for over a decade. Dr Adesina was Principal Economist for the West Africa Rice Development Association (1990-1995), Senior Economist and Social Science Coordlnator for the International Institute for Tropicat Agriculture (1995-1998) and Assistant Principal Economist of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (1988-1990).
A prolific writer, Dr Adesina has authored over 70 scholarly publications on Policy, Agricultural development, and African development issues. He is a globally respected Economist and has served as the President of the African Association of Agricultural Economists, as well as on the Editorial Board of several academic journals, including the International Journal of Agricultural Economists. He was awarded the Outstanding Black Agricultural Economist Award by the American Association of Agricultural Economists. He was a Distinguished Africanist Scholar at Cornell University, USA.
As President of the African Development Bank, he launched in 2015 a bold strategy to transform the lives of Africans-called the High 5s: to light Up and Power Africa; FeedAfrica; Integrate Africa; Industrialize Africa; and Improve the quality of life of the people of Africa. The High 5s have already impacted the lives of 335 miliion Africans.
To attract alternative-and increased investments into Africa, Dr Adesina launched the Africa Investment Forum- (AIF) in 2018, the first event of its kind, to attract global capital to support Africa’s accelerated development. The unique investmentforum, which has several African and global financial institutional partners, has become the premier investment marketplace for Africa, attracting to $180 billion worth of investment interests to Africa.
Dr. Adesina has received several distinctions and global awards, includingthe YARA Prize (2007) in Oslo, Norway, for his leadership in pioneering innovative approaches to improve access to Agricultural inputs for African farmers; Distinguished Alumni Award from Purdue University, USA, in 2008; Distinguished Alumni Award in 2009 and the Grand Commander of Great Ife in 2013, both from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria; and BorJaug CAST Communications Award in 2010 by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, USA, for his global leadership on Agricultural Science and Technology.
He has also received several honorary doctoral awards globally.
In Africa, he has received honorary doctorates from major universities.
In October 2017, his alma mater, Purdue University, USA, decorated him with its highest honor, the Order of the Griffin, a rare honor given only to 50 persons since 1893, including to Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
In 2019, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres appointed Dr Adesina as one of the 23 global leaders to help end Hunger and Malnutrition.
Dr. Adesina also serves on the Global Panel on Agricultare and Food svstemsfor Nutrition.
Dr. Adesina has won-several international awards including the Forbes Africa Person of the Year for his bold reforms in Nigeria’s Agriculture sector.
He has also been awarded the highest national honors of 9 African countries: Senegal, Cameroon, Madagascar, Togo, Liberia, Niger, The Gambia, Djibouti and Tunisia respectively.
In 2017, the World Food Prize Foundation awarded Dr Adesina the World Food Prize, generally known as the “Nobel Prize for Agriculture”, Dr Adeslna devoted the $250,000 laureate award to the establishment of the World Hunger Fighters foundation) to support Africa’s Youth in Agriculture and to develop a new generation of world hunger fighters.
In 2019, Dr Adesina led the African Development Bank to achieve its highest capital increase since the Bank’s establishment in 1964, when Shareholders raised the general capital of the Bank from $93 billion to $208 billion-a historic achievement for Africa.
In 2020, Dr. Adesina was re-elected to a 2nd term as President of the African Development Bank Group with 100% of the votes of all 81 African and Non-African shareholder countries, the first of such achievement-in the history of the African Development Bank, a demonstration of global confidence in his-outstanding leadership of the African Development Bank.
-City People
