In a nation blessed with oil, gas, fertile land, and a youthful population brimming with potential, the current administration of President Bola Tinubu has somehow managed to perform the unthinkable: transforming Africa’s largest economy into the world’s capital of extreme poverty. According to the latest World Bank Africa Pulse report, over 106 million Nigerians now live on less than $2.15 a day, the international benchmark for extreme poverty. This staggering figure represents 15% of the world’s poorest-yes, one in seven of Earth’s most destitute people now lives in Nigeria. For a country that prides itself as the “Giant of Africa,” this is not just a damning statistic or cruel arithmetic that translates to hunger, hopelessness, and humiliation; it is a national shame, a humanitarian indictment, and a moral collapse. What pride remains in being called the “Giant of Africa” when our children die of preventable diseases, when families cook soup with tears because there’s nothing else left in the pot? The so-called “reformers” in Aso Rock and their priesthood of technocrats have not healed the wounds of the nation; they have deepened them, salted them, and then called the bleeding progress.
Despite the chorus of economic “reforms” touted by the current administration – fuel subsidy removals, naira floatation, and other IMF-inspired policy prescriptions – the average Nigerian finds themselves battered by skyrocketing inflation, joblessness, hunger, and despair. These reforms, rather than lifting the poor from the pit, have shoveled more sand into their mouths. The economy may be liberalized, but for whom? Certainly not for the 106 million trapped in daily agony. And what exactly is the nature of a “reform” that increases bus fares beyond the daily earnings of a worker? What kind of economic liberalization leads to food prices so high that even the middle class is now lining up for palliatives like beggars in their own homeland? These are not reforms. They are cruel economic experiments, hatched in air-conditioned conference rooms by detached bureaucrats and rubber-stamped by leaders with neither conscience nor consequence. Once upon a time, Nigeria was a land of promise, flowing with oil, ambition, and the radiant dreams of her people. Today, she lies prostrate, her children hollow-eyed and barefoot, sacrificed at the altar of elite greed and economic sorcery.
Nigeria’s leaders boast about GDP growth driven by telecommunications and banking sectors, while over 100 million citizens can neither make a phone call without borrowing airtime nor open a bank account without collapsing under fees. What good is GDP if it does not put food on the table or provide clean water to drink? What use is economic data when it is drenched in the blood, sweat, and tears of the poor? Let us be clear: this poverty epidemic is not an accident. It is the consequence of decades of failed governance, economic voodoo, and political cowardice. It is what happens when corrupt elites are rewarded with more power, when public funds are looted with impunity, and when leaders treat the cries of the hungry as background noise.
The World Bank has rightly warned that poverty in fragile, resource-rich countries like Nigeria will only worsen in the absence of decisive structural reforms. But Nigeria is not just fragile; it is fractured, and the hands that cracked it still hold the hammer. What does it mean to be rich in oil but poor in food? To have gold beneath our soil and yet have children scavenge from garbage heaps? This is not irony, it is state-sponsored cruelty. What Nigeria lacks is not just reform; it lacks leadership. It lacks the integrity to plug the billions siphoned from public coffers annually. It lacks the political will to dismantle the gluttonous oligarchy feeding fat on public misery. It lacks the empathy to build an economy for people, not just for profit.
This is not misfortune. It is murder by governance. It is the result of deliberate choices—of greed over grace, of plunder over people, of cowardice over courage. What kind of reform strips the poor naked, sets their homes ablaze with inflation, and then lectures them about sacrifice? What government, worthy of the name, watches its people gnaw on crumbs while officials feast fat on stolen billions? The Nigerian ruling class does not govern – it gorges. It does not reform – it ravages. And in the process, it has turned the country into a graveyard of dreams.
This poverty is not natural; it is engineered. It is the consequence of years of theft masquerading as policy, of economic apartheid where a few sip wine in Abuja while millions drink misery from the gutters. The so-called fuel subsidy removal was not reform – it was a blunt guillotine that severed the neck of the poor, while the rich changed their SUVs and celebrated in dollars. The naira was floated, yes, but it drowned the people. And now they speak of “temporary improvements” in telecoms and banking, while the majority cannot afford to make a phone call or open a bank account.
The poor in Nigeria are not just neglected; they are targeted. They are crushed by policies dressed in borrowed suits and foreign jargon, designed to please foreign lenders while breaking the backs of local farmers, teachers, traders, and workers. Reforms, they say, but where is the reform of conscience? Of priorities? Of hearts? What Nigeria needs is not IMF prescriptions or World Bank workshops. It needs a moral insurrection. A political exorcism. A tearing down of the unholy alliance between the corrupt and the complicit. We must stop pretending. This house is on fire, and those fanning the flames are the same ones posing as firemen. Until we reclaim our government from the jackals and hyenas that have made governance a feeding frenzy, until we invest in people and not palaces, in dignity and not decadence, Nigeria will remain not a nation, but a wailing wall, where the hopes of the many are traded for the luxuries of the few.
And so, we mourn. We mourn the child too hungry to dream. We mourn the mother who boils stones for supper. We mourn the youth who trades his future for fare. And above all, we mourn a country that chooses betrayal over justice, cruelty over compassion, and silence over outrage. But mourning is not enough. Let this be a funeral song for apathy. Let it be a call to arms; for truth, for justice, and for the poor. Nigeria must rise. Or perish.
If Nigeria’s current trajectory holds, the country is not just heading toward disaster—it is dragging the entire region down with it. With 19% of sub-Saharan Africa’s extreme poor living in Nigeria alone, the nation has become an anchor of stagnation, not the engine of growth it was once destined to be.
Enough is enough. The time for empty speeches and cosmetic reforms is over. What Nigeria needs now is a revolution of values—rooted in equity, justice, and the sacredness of human life. Real reform means investing in people: in education, in health, in food security, and in livelihoods. Real reform means stopping the hemorrhage of public funds and making the economy work for the people. Until then, no matter how many oil barrels are drilled, towers are built, or GDP numbers cooked up; Nigeria will remain a rich nation of poor people. And that, more than any statistic, is the true tragedy.
