Nigerians are poor, in absolute or relative terms. Poor implies a lack of access to basic life needs: food, shelter, clothing, primary health care and education, electricity access, and assurance of security of life and property. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 31.8 million Nigerians suffer from acute hunger. According to the United Nations, in June 2024, 82 million Nigerians will go hungry soon. 133 million Nigerians are multidimensionally poor, according to the country’s statistics bureau, NBS. Over 40 percent of Nigeria’s 220 million survive below $1.9 per day.
Nigeria has the highest number of homeless people in the world, with 24.4 million Nigerians without shelter, according to the World Population Review 2023 Report. Nigeria has the highest electricity deficit in the world, with nearly 90 million Nigerians lacking access to electricity. Nigeria has one of the highest infant mortality rates for children between the ages of 0-5, with a ratio of 58 deaths in every 1000, according to the WHO. According to UNICEF, Nigeria has the world’s highest number of out-of-school children, at 20 million. In numerical terms, these troubling numbers tell us who the poor in Nigeria are. But why are they poor?
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Political leaders at all levels, past and present, have failed to manifest their manifestos. Decades of misrule, bad governance, and corruption (economic leakage) have exacerbated the number of impoverished Nigerians. Poorly developed and implemented policies have worsened the numbers. The Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) implemented in 1986 is attributed as the root cause of Nigeria’s sorry economic condition. Parasitic economic arrangements among the federating units in Nigeria have stiffened growth at the sub-national level.
The regional arrangement in Nigeria’s first republic has been jettisoned for a lazy economic arrangement where states have failed to capitalise on their sectoral areas of economic comparative advantage. Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution, drafted and badly developed by the military government, is a heartbeat of Nigeria’s political structure built to favour the elite, advance injustice, and weaken public institutions. The resource curse of crude oil has boxed Africa’s largest country into a weak, volatile, and lazy economic state that discourages non-oil economic growth and prosperity. Data suggest that countries that depend on taxes perform better than those that rely on natural resources. The current administration has abandoned the country’s National Development Plan of 2021-2025 for a new economic experiment that is failing. Recent government policies like fuel subsidy removal, floating the currency of an unproductive and import-dependent nation, surge in energy cost, insecurity, and incoherent monetary and fiscal policies have worsened the living standard of many Nigerians. But what do poor Nigerians need?
“Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution, drafted and badly developed by the military government, is a heartbeat of Nigeria’s political structure built to favour the elite, advance injustice, and weaken public institutions.”
Nigeria has a data poverty challenge. The last population census was conducted in 2006. Economic planners and researchers struggle to know who the poor are, where they are located, and what they need to guide data-driven decisions to lift them out of poverty. Nigeria urgently needs a robust, comprehensive, and technology-enabled population census to help economists tackle the problem of poverty. Social investment programs are hotbeds and conduit pipes for corruption and will continue to fail without data and transparency. Poor Nigerians need the government’s commitment to invest in basic and technical education.
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Collaborative investment in primary health care with a massive enrolment of most Nigerians into the National Health Insurance Scheme is crucial. Poor Nigerians need government funding for nano, micro, small, and medium enterprises (nMSMEs) that will create market-disruptive innovation to grow the economy, employ more Nigerians, and create economic prosperity for all. The successive government’s approach to wooing investors through continental visits with an entourage of economic advisers with the pretence of being business-ready is obsolete. Assure investors of their investment security, effective and transparent laws and regulations, low bureaucratic bottlenecks and corruption, and friendly and consistent business policies with adequate infrastructure; deep-pocket foreign investors will show up unsolicited to invest and support economic growth. Political actors need a national priority backed with sincere political actions that focus on improving the welfare of all Nigerians. China lifted over 800 million of their citizens out of poverty at a record time, answering the title questions above. Nigeria can take a clue and learn from China.
Victor Alikor is a Development Economist and Oxford Foundry Fellow.
