POVERTY IN NIGERIA: WHY HAVING OIL DOESN’T MEAN HAVING FOOD

By AKPORUE GODSGIFT AKPORUE

Nigeria has oil. We have gas, fertile soil, and more young people than most countries can dream of. But walk through any city in 2025-2026 and the numbers hit you in the face. The NBS said around 63 percent of us, that’s close to 140 million people, are trapped in multidimensional poverty. It doesn’t add up. How does a country this blessed end up with kids selling pure water in traffic instead of sitting in class, or engineering graduates using their degree to argue with passengers on a keke? The problem isn’t what we have. It’s what happens after we dig it out of the ground. The systems that should turn resources into schools, jobs, and safety are broken, and everybody feels it.

 

Unemployment is the part you can’t miss. Universities and polytechnics push out more than 600,000 graduates every single year. The job market doesn’t even pretend to keep up. I saw a small survey from a student press group in Lagos last year. They tracked the 2022 graduates and found that two years after NYSC, seven out of ten were either jobless or doing something that had nothing to do with what they studied. Part of the jam is in the civil service. People who should have retired years ago are still holding desks. Some even adjust their age on paper so they don’t have to leave. That blocks the door for younger ones. Outside government, it’s who you know. I’ve met first-class engineers who’ve written applications for two years straight and gotten silence, while someone’s cousin with a pass gets the slot. So what do people do? They find something. POS, bolt driving, betting shops, learning hairstyling. Not because they want to, but because the door to the formal economy is shut.

 

Corruption is how the money disappears before it can help. We budget billions for roads, for hospital beds, for fertilizer, and then watch it vanish somewhere between Abuja and our street. But let’s not act like it’s only politicians. Go to some public schools and you’ll see it. If your dad is the PTA chairman, you won’t be sent home when fees are late. If you’re the child of nobody, you’ll be standing outside for 3,000 naira. In the market, they’ll size you up before they call a price. Even in church, the man who paid for the tiles gets the handshake and the front seat. The woman who can’t afford offering envelope? She greets from the back. Once we start running everything on status instead of merit, poverty stops being bad luck. It becomes the design.

 

Then education locks the door. Most poor families can only afford public schools that are falling apart. No chairs, no labs, teachers who haven’t been paid in months. UNESCO keeps telling us we have over 10 million kids out of school, the worst number anywhere. And the ones inside aren’t all learning. A teacher in Ikorodu told me last year that half her SS3 class couldn’t write a simple application letter. You can’t blame those students when they fail JAMB or drop out of 200 level. They were set up to fail from primary school. Without reading, writing, or a real skill, how do you fight for the few jobs that exist? You don’t. So the cycle goes on.

 

Now add inflation and insecurity and the pot boils over. Food prices jumped past 40 percent early this year. I remember buying a bag of rice for 35k in January. By June it was over 80k. Transport doubled after subsidy went. Salary? That 30k minimum wage was still dragging its feet before they touched it. At the same time, farmers in places like Benue and Zamfara are scared to enter their own farms. Bandits and kidnappers own the bush. If food can’t leave the village, it won’t reach the city. Less supply, higher prices, more people going to bed hungry. That’s not theory. That’s Tuesday.

 

You see the results in real places. Hospitals have kids with swollen stomachs from malnutrition. People treat typhoid with agbo because they can’t pay 5,000 naira for lab tests. Crime goes up and we call it a moral problem, but half the time it’s a maths problem. Legal work doesn’t pay rent, so illegal work starts looking like a plan. It’s not right, but when your younger ones haven’t eaten, “right” gets complicated.

 

There’s no magic button, but there’s an order to this. Start by calling corruption what it is. Thief is thief. Put contracts online, jail people who steal, and pay for projects through systems that trace every kobo. Then fix education so it actually leads to money. Scholarships are fine, but we need more welding bays, more coding hubs, more places where a 17-year-old can learn solar installation in six months and feed himself. Jobs won’t appear by wishing. Government has to back small factories that use what we grow here. Leather in Kano, cassava in Ogun, tomatoes in Jos. Those places hire plenty when they work. And security is not separate from the economy. If a farmer can’t harvest, we all pay for it at the market. Fix rural roads, put real police in farm areas, respond fast when villages are attacked.

 

But government won’t solve this alone. The days of waiting for a white-collar job are done. If you’re young, learn something you can sell tomorrow. Online or on your street. One skill, two side hustles, three plans. Hold your student union, your church, your town meeting accountable too. Stop clapping for money when you don’t know where it came from. And if you’re a parent, choose training that feeds your child over a certificate that just hangs on the wall.

 

Poverty is Nigeria’s biggest problem right now. It’s not a curse and it’s not confusing. It’s unemployment, corruption, bad schools, rising prices, and fear all mixing together. We can reduce it, but only if leaders stop stealing, if we invest in skills and safety, and if normal people refuse to act like this is normal. A better Nigeria isn’t something we pray for on Sunday. It’s a list of work we haven’t done yet. The faster we start, the faster those numbers drop.