In 1996, the World Bank issued a now-historic report titled “Nigeria – Poverty in the Midst of Plenty: The Challenge of Growth with Inclusion.” It was a stark paradox: a country blessed with vast oil wealth, fertile land, and youthful energy was simultaneously home to some of the most entrenched forms of poverty in the world. The diagnosis was clear. Nigeria’s growth, such as it was, had failed to include its people. Nearly three decades later, the diagnosis has not changed, only the symptoms have worsened.
On April 24, 2025, the World Bank updated the global development community with a fresh, chilling reminder of this ongoing failure. According to its report, Nigeria now accounts for 15 percent of the world’s poorest people. In real terms, this means tens of millions of Nigerians live without meaningful access to health care, education, electricity, decent housing, or livelihoods that offer dignity. This statistic should alarm every policymaker in the country. But it also calls for something deeper than alarm. It calls for a fundamental shift in how we understand and confront poverty.
Since Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999, every administration—regardless of party or ideological leaning—has promised to confront poverty head-on. Programs have come and gone: the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP), the National Social Investment Programme, SURE-P, and a host of state-level initiatives. Budgets have been appropriated, donor support secured, and implementation units established. Yet poverty has not only persisted, it has deepened and, in many regions, become more spatially entrenched.
The reason is painfully clear. Nigerian policymaking has consistently failed to diagnose properly before prescribing. Poverty has been treated as an isolated affliction, as if the issue could be fixed with cash transfers or skills acquisition workshops, while the deeper systems – economic, institutional, political – remained untouched. As Dani Rodrik cautions, diagnosis must precede prescription. In Nigeria’s case, what we need is a full causal layered analysis – interrogating not just the visible deprivations, but the structural inequities, ideological blind spots, and entrenched narratives that keep the poor trapped in cycles of exclusion.
At the visible level, we face high unemployment, poor education outcomes, weak infrastructure, and rising inflation. Beneath that, however, lies a rent-based political economy, where access to state resources is determined by proximity to power, not productivity. The economy is structured to reward distribution over creation. Even deeper is the worldview that sees poverty as a matter of misfortune rather than exclusion from opportunity. And at the metaphorical level, poverty is still understood as a condition to be managed, not a system to be dismantled.
To break this cycle, we must first confront the political economy that sustains it. Anti-poverty programs in Nigeria are often repurposed as tools of patronage. Rather than mechanisms for structural change, they become channels for political loyalty and elite consolidation. When interventions are not anchored in institutional reforms or accompanied by mechanisms of transparency and citizen engagement, they inevitably fail to scale or sustain impact.
The Nigerian state needs to reimagine its role, not as a benefactor distributing aid, but as a builder of inclusive systems. That means making productivity, not patronage, the central logic of policy. State and local governments must stop outsourcing responsibility upward and begin leading on infrastructure, health, education, and local industrialization strategies. The fiscal architecture must incentivize this behavior, not frustrate it.
It is not enough to increase budgetary allocations to social programs. We must ask whether these allocations are reaching the people they claim to serve, whether they are enabling dignity and resilience, or merely perpetuating dependence. Poverty cannot be treated as a political constituency to be managed during election cycles. It must be addressed as a national emergency that threatens cohesion, legitimacy, and the very viability of the state.
The way forward must be anchored in three mutually reinforcing pillars: human capital, structural transformation, and civic accountability.
First, human capital development must move from the margins of policy to its center. Nigeria’s education system is in crisis, underfunded, poorly managed, and detached from the demands of a modern economy. Health care is similarly overstretched and under-resourced. But beyond the numbers, it is the governance of service delivery that must change. Teacher absenteeism, lack of accountability, and resource leakages are not technical issues, they are political failures. Reform must begin here.
Second, the economic model must shift from rent extraction to productive expansion. Industrial and agricultural policy must no longer be dirty words. Nigeria must embrace heterodox strategies that blend state support with private innovation, build local value chains, and enable smallholders and SMEs to scale. Agro-industrial hubs, rural infrastructure investments, and strategic import substitution should not be ideological battlegrounds, but pragmatic necessities. States must take the lead, developing policies that reflect their comparative advantages and resource profiles.
Third, there must be a reinvestment in local governance and civic participation. Real development happens when communities have agency – when the poor can demand answers, co-design solutions, and see results. Participatory budgeting, open data platforms, and independent monitoring mechanisms are not luxuries; they are preconditions for rebuilding trust.
The World Bank’s latest report is not just a wake-up call. It is a reckoning. That Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and one of the world’s most resource-endowed nations should still account for 15 percent of global poverty is a national failure of epic proportions. But it is not an irreversible one.
History offers us lessons, and it offers us choices. Other nations have confronted similar challenges and transformed their destinies, not through miracles, but through coherent, bold, and sustained action. Nigeria’s path will not be identical, but it must be intentional. It must be rooted in political courage, institutional learning, and a genuine commitment to broad-based development.
We can no longer afford cosmetic solutions, policy somersaults, or elite bargains that protect privilege while abandoning the poor. The cost of inaction is no longer abstract. It is visible in the eyes of children who will never see the inside of a classroom, in communities ravaged by preventable diseases, and in the mounting insecurity bred by economic desperation.
