By Blaise Udunze

Nigeria’s deepening poverty crisis is no longer speculative; it is now statistically inevitable. Although the latest Consumer Price Index figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) suggest that headline inflation is cooling and growth indicators show tentative improvement, regrettably, more Nigerians are slipping below the poverty line. Reviewing the recent projections from PwC’s Nigeria Economic Outlook 2026, it is alarming, which reveals that no fewer than two million additional Nigerians are expected to fall into poverty next year. This is expected to push the total number of poor people to about 141 million, roughly 62 percent of the population and the highest level ever recorded in the country’s history.

This grim outlook persists despite eight consecutive months of easing inflation and modest economic recovery, and as one can perceive, the contradiction is telling. The fact remains that macroeconomic signals are improving on paper, yet lived reality continues to deteriorate. It is glaring that the widening gap between policy metrics and human outcomes exposes a deeper truth in the sense that Nigeria’s poverty crisis is not simply the product of external shocks or temporary adjustment pains. It is the cumulative result of fragile policymaking, inconsistent reforms, weak institutional coordination, and a failure to sequence economic changes with adequate social protection. With these, it becomes clearer that poverty in Nigeria is no longer an unintended side effect of reform; it is increasingly its most visible outcome as identified today.

It would be recalled that the current administration in 2023, when it assumed office, promised a bold economic reset. At this point, the nation witnessed the fuel subsidy removal, exchange-rate liberalisation, and tighter fiscal discipline being introduced swiftly and applauded internationally for their courage and long-term logic. Notably, these reforms unleashed an economic storm whose aftershocks continue to batter households and currently resulting to the cost of a bag of rice that sold for about N35,000 two years ago now costs between N65,000 and N80,000, while a crate of eggs has risen from N1,200 to over N6,000 and basic staples like garri, tomatoes, and pepper have drifted beyond the reach of ordinary Nigerians. For millions, the economy did not reset; it snapped.

Inflation, often described by economists as a “silent tax,” has punished productivity, mocked thrift, and rewarded speculation.

Reports from the NBS’s December 2025 disclosed that headline inflation eased to 15.15 percent and according to it, this is due to a rebasing of the Consumer Price Index, down sharply from 34.8 percent a year earlier, this statistical moderation has brought little relief to households. Food inflation, at 10.84 percent year-on-year, and a marginal month-on-month decline may look reassuring on spreadsheets, but for families spending 70 to 80 percent of their income on food, such figures feel detached from reality. These figures are not only implausible but also insulting to those whose lives have been torn apart by the skyrocketing prices. With the realities facing the larger populace, Nigeria must be using another mathematics.

Nigeria may have changed its base year, but it has not changed the harsh arithmetic of survival.

PwC’s data underscores this disconnect, as nominal household spending rose by nearly 20 percent in 2025, real household spending contracted by 2.5 percent, reflecting the erosive impact of rising food, transport, and energy costs. The painful part of it, is that Nigerians are spending more money to consume less, and this is to say that growth, hovering around 4 percent, is not strong enough to absorb shocks or lift households meaningfully. As analysts note, Nigeria would require sustained growth of 7 to 9 percent to make a significant dent in poverty. That is to say that anything less merely slows the descent.

The structural weakness of the economy is compounded by policy inconsistency. Nigeria’s economic landscape is littered with abrupt shifts, subsidy removals without buffers, currency reforms without stabilisation mechanisms and trade policies that oscillate between restriction and openness. For households and small businesses, which employ most Nigerians, this unpredictability makes planning impossible. The economy has constantly being faced with price volatility, income shocks, and lost jobs because these are the ripple effects of every policy reversal. Uncertainty itself has become a poverty multiplier.

Nowhere is this fragility more evident than in food systems and rural livelihoods, and this has been where insecurity has merged with policy failure to create a new poverty spiral. Across farmlands in the North and Middle Belt, crops rot unharvested as banditry and insurgency force farmers off their land. Nigeria’s largely agrarian economy has been crippled by violence that disrupts planting cycles, destroys infrastructure, and displaces communities. The result is both income poverty for farmers denied access to their livelihoods and food inflation that erodes purchasing power nationwide.

For record purposes, earlier last year, the NBS Multidimensional Poverty Index showed that 63 percent of Nigerians, about 133 million people, are multidimensionally poor, with poverty heavily concentrated in insecure regions. Findings showed that about 86 million of the poor live in the North, and this is where insecurity is most severe. This record showed that rural poverty stands at 72 percent,c compared to 42 percent in urban areas, and while the states most affected by banditry and insurgency record poverty rates as high as 91 percent. Insecurity is no longer just a security problem; it is one of Nigeria’s most powerful poverty drivers.

The economic cost of insecurity in Nigeria today is staggering. This is because the conservative estimates suggest Nigeria loses about $15 billion annually, which is roughly equivalent to N20 trillion, due to insecurity-induced disruptions across agriculture, trade, manufacturing, and transportation. At the same time, security spending now consumes up to a quarter of the federal budget. In just three years, over N4 trillion has been spent on security, which crowded out investment in health, education, power, and infrastructure. Every naira spent managing perpetual violence is a naira not invested in preventing poverty, even as poverty deepens, the state’s fiscal response reveals a troubling misalignment of priorities. The 2026 federal budget, estimated at N58.47 trillion, ironically allocates just N206.5 billion to projects directly tagged as poverty alleviation and this only amounts to about 0.35 percent of total spending and less than one percent of the capital budget. In a country where over 60 percent of citizens live below the poverty line, this allocation borders on policy negligence.

Worse still, over 96 percent of this already meagre poverty envelope sits under the Service Wide Vote through the National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy, largely as recurrent provisions. All ministries, departments, and agencies combined account for barely N6.5 billion in poverty-related projects. This fragmentation reflects a deeper institutional failure, that is to say, poverty reduction exists more as a line item than as a coherent national mission.

Where MDA-level interventions exist, they are largely palliative and scattered, grain distribution in select communities, tricycles and motorcycles for empowerment, and small scale skills acquisition for women and youths. The largest such project, a N2.87 billion tricycle and motorcycle scheme under a federal cooperative college, accounts for nearly half of all MDA-based poverty spending. The fact remains that the various interventions may offer temporary relief, and they do little to address structural drivers of poverty such as job creation, productivity, market access and human capital development.

Even the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation illustrates the problem just as its budget jumped sharply in 2026, much of the increase went into administrative and capital items, office furniture, equipment, international travel, retreats, and systems automation rather than direct poverty-fighting programmes. This reflects a familiar Nigerian paradox: institutions grow, but impact shrinks.

International partners have been blunt in their assessments. The World Bank estimates that Nigeria spends just 0.14 percent of GDP on social protection, which is far below the global and regional averages. Only 44 percent of safety-net benefits actually reach the poor, rendering the system inefficient and largely ineffective. PwC similarly warns that without targeted job creation, productivity-focused reforms, and effective social protection, poverty will continue to rise, undermining domestic consumption and straining public finances further.

Fiscal fragility compounds the crisis. The N58.18 trillion 2026 budget carries a deficit of N23.85 trillion, with debt servicing projected at N15.52 trillion, nearly half of expected revenue. The public debt has ballooned to over N152 trillion. The contradiction here is that Nigeria is borrowing not to expand productive capacity but to keep the machinery of government running. The truth is not far-fetched because, as debt crowds out development spending, households are forced to pay privately for public goods, education, healthcare, water, deepening inequality and entrenching poverty across generations.

To be clear, not all signals are negative. This is because opportunities exist if reforms are sustained and properly sequenced. Regional trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area could diversify exports and create jobs. But reform momentum without inclusion and institutional capacity risks becoming another missed opportunity.

This is the central tragedy of Nigeria’s moment. The country is attempting necessary reforms in an environment of weak buffers, fragile institutions, and low trust. Poverty is therefore not accidental. It is the predictable outcome of inconsistency, reforms without protection, stabilisation without security, and budgets without people.

Nigeria faces an undeniable choice. It can continue down a path where fragile policies deepen deprivation and erode trust, or it can build a disciplined, coordinated framework that aligns reforms with social protection, security, and inclusive growth. Poverty is not destiny. But escaping it requires more than courage in reform announcements; it demands consistency, compassion, and the political will to place human welfare at the centre of economic strategy.

Blaise, a journalist and PR professional, writes from Lagos and can be reached via: [email protected]

NGX Regulation Limited has given a 10 working-day ultimatum to Global Assets Management Limited, a securities company, to resolve the allegations of alleged forgery, theft, diversion of proceeds, and possibly money laundering leveled against it by Mr Kolawole Oladapo Adesina, a complainant.

Adesina had alleged that shares belonging to him and Emmanuel Olanipekun Adesina, his late father, from different companies were stolen and proceeds diverted to unknown persons.

In the same vein, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also launched investigations into the same complaints against the same securities company.

NGX Regulation, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX group) committed to promoting just and equitable principles of trade and sound business practices in the Nigerian capital market by strictly enforcing clients’ listing and trading rules in accordance with global best practices.

Its activities seek to promote the integrity, transparency and efficiency of our market, ensuring that the standards set are effective in maintaining a fair and orderly market where investors are adequately protected.

In a letter with reference number NGXRECO/MRIVG/7160/1/26, signed by Chinedu Akamaka, Head, Market Regulation, the regulatory body acknowledged the petition of the complainant and stated that “In line with rule 5(4) of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) rules on Complaints Management Framework of the Nigerian Capital Market 2015, your firm is required to solve this complaint within ten(10) working days and forward a report on resolution or non resolution. Your report should reach NGX Regco not later than 30 January 2026”.

SEC, in its own letter dated January 7, 2026 and signed by Mr John Abel Briggs, the Head, Lagos Zonal Office stated that while acknowledging Adesina’s petition, it has commenced investigations into the matter.

“Please be informed that we have commenced investigations by seeking Global Assets Management Limited, CSCS, and NGX to investigate the allegations in line with the Complaint Management Framework of the Nigerian Capital Market (NCM).

The company in the eyes of the storm, Global Assets, has however denied any wrongdoing in its reply addressed to NGX Regulation and signed by Sir Babatunde Sobamowo, managing director,  saying the allegations were unfounded.

Adesina, still smarting from the shocking revelation that his father, Prince Emmanuel Olanipekun Adesina, a late Banker with the United Bank of Africa (UBA) who allegedly died intestate did not,  but has a will.

He’s currently battling to have the will read at the Probate Registry of the High Court of Lagos State, Ikeja Judicial Division.

In the many shocking revelations while going through his parents’ documents, he discovered many shares his father had bought for him since the time of his youth.

Most of these shares, and that of his father, has disappeared without a trace, only relying on the father’s documentation to trace them.

In a 15 paragraph affidavit he deposed to and filed at the registry of the Ikeja High Court, which formed his petition before SEC, the complainant narrated his ordeal this:

“I am the beneficial owner of securities and investments held with Global Asset Management Limited under account number 23278460(old account number A0457245) and Clearing House No C4928105AN. I have held the investments registered in my name since my childhood, acquired and maintained by my late father for my benefit.

My late father, whose particulars I can provide on request, purchased shareholdings  in my name up to and including the date of his death on February 21, 2006.

I did not authorize any sale of the Securities held in my account and have never knowingly sold any holdings in that account;

“On or about August 25,2022 when I attended the offices of Global Assets Management to effect a sale of certain securities to raise funds, I was provided with documentation and account records indicating that a substantial (and in some cases total) portion of my securities had already been sold and the sale proceeds diverted.

“No such sale had been authorized by me and no proceeds of such alleged sale were paid to me or credited to the account records held by Global Assets in my name;

“Upon inspection of the physical file and documents in my possession and in the custody of Global Assets Management, I discovered numerous stock transfers, notes on sale and other documents bearing my signature which I did not sign. I verily believe that the said signatures are forged”.

With this discovery, Adesina directed his lawyers, Pich Solicitors, to write a letter of demand to the company requesting production of all documents and materials relating to his account from February 21, 2006 till date. The company however failed to comply. He therefore urges SEC to compel the company to produce the documents and other materials requested. He fears if it’s not compelled, the company may alter, delete, or otherwise fail to preserve records relevant to the matters that are subject of his complaint.

Adesina exhibited over 10 documents to support his complaint which include copies of his account statements, copies of stock transfers bearing alleged forged signatures, CSCS certificate/ deposit forms relating to his holdings, sales contract notes and transaction confirmations, CSCS printout on stocks held in his name, dividend statements and dividend warrants in his name, copies of his share certificates in Berger Paints Nigeria Plc, Nigerian Bottling Company Plc, Grammac Industries Plc, and West African Portland Cement Plc. “I unequivocally and verily believe that the exhibits listed are materials relevant to the issues raised in this application and that they substantiate the allegations of unauthorized sales, forged signatures,and diversion of sales proceeds”, he averred.

Adesina’s petition was copied to the Chairman of Global Assets Management, Dr S.T.V Adegbite and all other directors of the company. It’s also copied to DG SEC, CEO, Nigerian Exchange Group, MD, Central Securities Clearing System Plc(CSCS), The Chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Director, Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit(NFIU), and Commissioner of Police, Force CID(Financial Crimes Unit).

In its response addressed to NGX Regulation, Global Assets Management Limited described all the allegations as unfounded. “In compliance with our regulatory obligations, we have carefully reviewed the allegations contained in the petition and hereby provide our response, addressing each issue raised by the petitioner sequentially and supported by relevant documentation”, the response stated.

The company explained that their real client was the petitioner’s mother, late Mrs Frances Omorolaun Adesina. “Our professional relationship with her spanned several years during which she conducted securities transactions through our firm until her demise. At no time prior to her death did the petitioner operate the relevant account independently or maintain a separate trading mandate with GAM”, it stated.

GAM maintained that its first formal interaction with the petitioner occured through his lawyer, Pich Solicitors, requesting information relating to the state of the petitioner’s father. Subsequently the petitioner personally visited and was availed with a CSCS statement relating to his account and a KYC update form which the petitioner never returned.

The company stated further: “According to records obtained directly from CSCS,  the only securities credited to the petitioner’s account were deposited on September 15, 2009, three years after the death of his father in 2006. We are unable, and not required to determine whether the shares were purchased by his late father or late mother. However the records show that no securities were deposited into the petitioner’s account in 2006 or earlier. Only three securities were deposited through GAM”.

The company also listed as exhibits documents which includes a duly executed sale order form dated April 4, 2014, Statement of account of the late mother, copy of cheque, letter of authority dated January 11, 2014 signed by the petitioner and his sister authorizing their late mother to transact on matters relating to their father’s estate, and GAM bank statement confirming payment of the proceeds to the named beneficiary.

However, there seems to be discrepancies in the signature tendered by both parties as they did not correspond. SEC will therefore determine which one is genuine and having regard to the power of a parent to trade on an adult child securities without proper consent.

Credit… The Nation

KongaPay has announced that users have collectively saved more than N3.2 billion through its K-Save product, an outstanding milestone in Nigeria’s fast-evolving digital finance landscape.

K-Save, KongaPay’s savings feature, allows users to set aside funds seamlessly within the Konga ecosystem, combining ease of access with automated savings habits.

As inflation continues to erode disposable income, digital savings products like K-Save are emerging as practical instruments for everyday financial resilience.

Industry analysts note that such platforms play a growing role in Nigeria’s broader financial inclusion agenda, particularly among young professionals, informal sector workers, and digitally native consumers who may be underserved by traditional banking models.

KongaPay described the achievement as a community-driven milestone, crediting users for consistently committing to savings goals despite macroeconomic headwinds.

The company said the ₦3.2 billion saved so far represents thousands of individual financial journeys, ranging from emergency funds and education plans to business capital and long-term wealth building.

With Nigeria’s fintech sector increasingly focused on deposits, savings, and wealth management, beyond payments alone, the K-Save milestone positions KongaPay as an active participant in shaping consumer savings behaviour in the digital economy.

As competition intensifies across fintech savings products, platforms that combine trust, accessibility, and tangible value are expected to capture a growing share of Nigeria’s expanding digital finance market.