A Rich Nation with Poor Citizens — Nigeria is a poor country

A Rich Nation with Poor Citizens — Nigeria is a poor country

It takes much more than just having economic resources that you may harvest from the earth to succeed in business. That is why everybody thinks Nigeria is a rich country, which is generally completely wrong.

Over the past 60 years, the Nigerian issue has remained unchanged. Our problem has been the same. Poverty. Nigeria is a poor country. People become upset if someone says it; people become agitated. “How can a nation with so many resources be classified as poor? No, my brother, you are mistaken; the problem is corruption. Our leaders steal; that is why we are poor.”

This contradiction raises an important question: If Nigeria is so rich in resources, why are so many Nigerians poor? No, the major problems in Nigeria are corruption and leadership problems, as many would say. Yes, leadership solutions can make a country rich. But no country is completely free from corruption.

I do not know of any nation free of corruption. That does not mean it is not a problem here. There are variants of corruption. There is opportunistic corruption, Systemic corruption, Endemic corruption, and corruption driven by culture. Nigeria’s own is cultural and endemic. But that is not only our problem. It is an outcome of our problem. That is corruption.

If your country has a lot of natural resources, you are supposed to be rich. However, it doesn’t appear to be true, though. There are many highly resource-rich countries that very much flounder in the middle of the economic pack: Russia, Brazil, many African countries, including Nigeria, and even the Middle East, despite its perception of being wealthy. Conversely, many of the world’s richest countries are in Western Europe and have few natural resources.

Making it easy to understand, Nigeria, with a GDP per capita of barely $1k, is poor by all definitions. Yes, at one point Nigeria was at almost $3k in 2014, but even then, we were classified as poor. Those aspiring to lead at all levels should speak to growing that pot, growing our earnings; if they can’t, it will be the same disappointments that follow elections. And when you want to point to the performance of a leader at national or subnational, share how that leader grew the pot, not infantile positions many of us put forward

If the breadwinner of a home earns 400k from all sources, and has needs, not wants, of 5m, the problem is that the breadwinner does not earn enough. It is still insufficient even in the absence of theft, but it can be made worse if there is stealing from what was initially inadequate. Now, to make it a little clearer, insufficiency creates a need gap and a scramble for resources. Prepared leaders grow insufficiency to sufficiency; greedy leaders siphon it. Insufficiency breeds a streak of self-first in humans and then makes stealing and cheating others a way of life. There is not enough food, and many people are waiting to eat the meat. Because you are constantly in a condition of deprivation, you learn how to eat hot food, conceal meat in Amala, or in your mouth, and experience some slavery.

Whenever I hear a campaign by an aspirant that does not include how to grow the pot, I dismiss that aspirant as unserious. Funding education, health care, social transfers, and security depends on adequate resources to make it happen. What about the argument for cutting waste- extremely good, but consider the core problem: inadequacy. However, the high cost of governance and the problem of misappropriation in Nigeria are also among our problems. Solution — Good leadership

The World Bank, Nigeria recorded a multidimensional poverty headcount ratio of 47.03% in 2022, a GNI per capita (Atlas method) that declined from US$2,590 in 2023 to US$1,700 in 2024, GDP growth of 3.33% in 2023 and 4.06% in 2024, and a Gini Index of 33.89 in 2022, highlighting a situation where moderate economic growth coexists with high poverty levels and significant inequality. The people are poorer than the economy is growing.

One of Nigeria’s greatest contradictions is the coexistence of wealth and poverty. The country generates billions of dollars from oil exports, yet millions of Nigerians struggle daily to afford food, healthcare, transportation, and education. These are the basics.

This situation creates what economists call the “resource curse,” a condition in which countries rich in natural resources fail to achieve meaningful development due to corruption, poor leadership, and overdependence on a single commodity.

Many young Nigerians graduate from universities without adequate skills because the education system is underfunded and repeatedly disrupted by strikes.

Nigeria’s population is among the youngest in the world. While this should be an advantage, like China, it has become a major challenge because the economy cannot create enough quality jobs, and the education the young population received did not train them to create employment opportunities themselves.

The problem is not necessarily the absence of wealth. The real issue lies in poor governance, corruption, weak institutions, economic mismanagement, and the inability to convert national wealth into human development.

In the dependency theory of thinkers like Raúl Prebisch, Walter Rodney, Theotokion Dos Santos, and Andre Gunder Frank, the Third World has also been connected to the world-systemic economic division as “periphery” countries dominated by the countries comprising the economic “core”.

Nigeria’s poverty is not simply an economic problem; it is largely a governance and structural problem. The country has enough resources and human capacity to become one of the world’s leading economies. However, until wealth is properly managed and development becomes people-centered, millions of Nigerians will continue to experience poverty despite living in a resource-rich nation.

Conclusion: A country troubled by Unstable electricity supply, Poor road networks, Inadequate healthcare facilities, Weak educational systems, Limited industrial support, rising crime, Political instability, and social frustration. Nigeria is therefore not a poor country in terms of potential. It is a country whose enormous wealth has yet to translate into prosperity for the majority of its people.