by Mohammed Bello Doka
25 July, 2026
Nigeria is a very rich nation, but in Nigeria almost everyone is poor. The poor lack resources and knowledge, the businesses lack an enabling environment, and the government lacks idea and direction. This is not hyperbole—this is the brutal, unvarnished truth of Africa's largest economy, a country that sits on enough natural wealth to feed, power, and house an entire continent, yet cannot keep its own lights on or its own children fed.
Consider what Nigeria possesses. The country holds 37.28 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves, ranking 11th globally, with daily production of 1.8 million barrels. The oil and gas sector delivers about 90 percent of export earnings and nearly 70 percent of government revenue. Nigeria also holds 210.54 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves—enough to last 93 years at current production levels. But that is merely the beginning. Nigeria has 42.47 billion tons of probable bitumen reserves, the sixth largest in the world, some estimates ranking it second only to Canada. The country holds over 3 billion tons of iron ore, 639 million tons of coal, 2.3 trillion metric tons of limestone, 3 billion tons of kaolin, and 1 billion tons of gypsum. There is lithium worth an estimated $34 billion, 230 million tons of manganese, 10 million tons of lead and zinc, 6 million tons of monazite containing rare earth elements, and over 40 commercially viable minerals spread across more than 500 locations in all 36 states. Nigeria has 70 million hectares of agricultural land, with 34 million hectares arable, and leads Africa in rice and yam production. The nation sits at the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers, receives 2,300 to 2,600 hours of sunshine per year, and possesses a population of over 230 million people with a median age of just 18.1 years.
By all indices, this is the description of a rich nation, isn't it?
Yet here is the paradox that defines modern Nigeria: 139 million Nigerians now live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank's October 2025 Nigeria Development Update. That is 61 percent of the population, up from 81 million in 2019 and 87 million in 2023. In rural areas, 75.5 percent are affected; in urban areas, 41.3 percent. The UNDP's Global Multidimensional Poverty Index reports that approximately 133 million Nigerians experience acute deprivation across health, education, and living standards—worse than Sub-Saharan Africa's average of 55 percent and the global average of 18 percent. GDP per capita sits at roughly $1,224. The country ranks 164th on the Human Development Index, in the "low human development" category, and 115th out of 123 countries on the Global Hunger Index, with a score indicating a "serious" level of hunger. The IMF projects that by 2030, Nigeria and the DRC alone will host one in every four people living in extreme poverty globally. A nation with 37 billion barrels of oil, 42 billion tons of bitumen, 3 billion tons of iron ore, and 230 million young people—and this is where it stands?
What happened to all that wealth? Where does it go?
The answer lies in the suffocating environment in which Nigerian businesses are forced to operate. Officially, there are over 60 taxes and levies that businesses pay in Nigeria. Unofficially, according to the Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, it is more than 200 taxes in a country where they want to create employment. "Some of those nuisance levies and taxes are even in our constitution," he admitted in October 2025. Despite the passage of four tax reform bills in June 2025 aimed at harmonizing revenue collection, stakeholders have expressed fears that multiple taxation may not be over, with the President of the Chartered Institute of Directors Nigeria warning that companies operating across different states are "often confronted with a myriad of levies that stifle growth and complicate compliance." The new Nigeria Tax Act increased the Capital Gains Tax for companies from 10 percent to 30 percent—a 200 percent hike that experts warn will dampen long-term capital formation, discourage mergers and acquisitions, and trigger capital flight. At a time when companies are struggling with high costs and fragile margins, such a steep hike risks slowing growth and reducing the tax base. Is this an environment designed for business to thrive, or is it a gauntlet designed to extract, exhaust, and extinguish?
Then consider the infrastructure—or rather, the lack of it. Nigeria's roads are a national disgrace. Federal and state highways are riddled with potholes, many barely passable during the rainy season. Truck drivers spend days stranded on roads leading to Lagos ports, creating bottlenecks that drive up the cost of goods. What should be a 30-minute journey to the Baro Inland Port now takes over four hours due to the state of the roads. The CEO of DP World described Nigeria's logistics business as inefficient, with poor road and port infrastructure driving up costs and making it difficult and costly to move goods across the country. The power sector tells an even grimmer story. Throughout 2025, the national grid suffered more than a dozen major disturbances, many escalating into nationwide blackouts. In one instance in September 2025, power generation crashed from nearly 2,918 megawatts to just 1.5 megawatts, plunging roughly 30 states into darkness. The Transmission Company of Nigeria runs what one former senior manager described as "a 21st-century economy on 1970s infrastructure," with a grid that is old, overstretched, and poorly protected. An $800 million power intervention programme designed to stabilize the sector failed to deliver tangible improvements. "The problem is not just funding; it is how the funding is applied," said one energy policy analyst. "We keep pouring money into the same centralized grid model that has proven incapable of delivering stable power." Over 200 companies have abandoned the national grid entirely, investing instead in captive power systems. For small businesses and households, the cost of fueling diesel generators eats deep into income. Without reliable power, how can any industry grow? How can any job be created? How can any nation industrialize?
And then there is the government—a government that lacks vision and direction, making every Nigerian poor in the areas that matter most. The corruption that pervades every level of public life is staggering. Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Nigeria 142nd out of 182 countries, scoring just 26 out of 100—far below the global average of 42 and the Sub-Saharan African average of 33. Nigeria ranked behind 33 other African countries, including Seychelles, Cabo Verde, Botswana, Rwanda, Ghana, and Senegal. The country dropped two places from its 2024 ranking, showing stagnation in anti-corruption efforts amid persistent governance challenges. The Executive Director of Transparency International Nigeria described the ranking as "something we should be worried about," noting that "with all that is happening in this country, we should not be surprised that we are a stagnating country." Is this the government that holds the keys to Nigeria's wealth? Is this the leadership that will transform resources into prosperity?
The people who lack resources and knowledge are robbed of any idea to challenge their leaders. They are kept in bondage through religion, tribalism, and other similar sentiments—weapons deployed with surgical precision to divide, distract, and disarm. While politicians fan the flames of ethnic suspicion and religious intolerance, the real theft continues unabated. While northerners and southerners are set against each other, while Christians and Muslims are pitted in endless suspicion, the oil flows, the gas flares, the minerals are shipped, and the wealth disappears into private accounts. The poor fight each other over crumbs while the feast is carried away in plain sight. They are told to be patient, to pray, to wait for their turn—but their turn never comes. The government lacks the idea, or perhaps it lacks the will, to connect the dots between the oil in the creeks and the poverty in the villages, between the gold in Zamfara and the unemployment in Lagos, between the sunlight blazing down 2,600 hours a year and the darkness of a nation that cannot keep its lights on.
Nigeria is a rich nation, but its people are poor. The businesses are suffocated. The government is lost. The leaders use division as a shield and corruption as a sword. And the people—139 million of them living in poverty—are told that their suffering is the price of progress. But whose progress? And at whose expense?
That is the question, isn't it? That is the wound. And until Nigerians stop asking and start demanding, until they see through the tribal masks and religious veils, until they understand that their poverty is not an accident but a design—until then, Nigeria will remain what it has always been: a rich nation of poor people, a giant asleep, a promise forever broken.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
Abuja Network News
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