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ADDRESSING INCREASING POVERTY
The authorities need to create the enabling environment to fight poverty
Three in five Nigerians earn below N100,000 monthly or have no income. But on paper, the economy is gradually stabilising, on ground, not much has changed. “Across income, savings, spending, debt, and financial satisfaction, a consistent pattern emerges: Nigerians are adapting with resilience, but within increasingly narrow margins,” said Piggyvest Savings Report 2025. “What we’re seeing at scale is that even people with the discipline and intent to save are being forced to redirect those funds toward the basics,” Piggyvest co-founder and chief operating officer (COO), Odun Eweniyi said while commenting on the findings. “These aren’t discretionary expenses you can cut.”
The Piggyvest report is particularly very instructive on why most Nigerians are now more preoccupied with meeting immediate personal and family commitments that they hardly save for tomorrow. “Family responsibility continues to be a defining feature of the financial landscape,” the report further noted. “Savings culture also appears to be weakening, with about one in two Nigerians not saving at all, while only four in 10 have emergency funds.”
As bleak as the findings may seem, the report is not different from others that have been highlighting the growing poverty among the majority of people in Nigeria, despite macroeconomic indications to the contrary. For instance, in the 5th Wave of National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) General Household Survey 2023/2024 which tracked the resilience of Nigerians over time, approximately two out of three households indicated being unable to eat healthy, nutritious or preferred food because of lack of money. That level of social exclusion is dangerous for any country.
Indeed, the reality of the Nigerian condition has regularly been brought home by the annual reports by Oxfam, an international confederation of NGOs working with partners in over 90 countries to end the injustices that cause poverty. “While a few individuals amass immense wealth, over 133 million Nigerians face hunger daily. This extreme inequality is largely unearned, built on inheritance, monopolies, and unfair advantages,” said the Oxfam Country Director, John Makina.
That millions of citizens can hardly eat a good meal a day is a fact. Just as many others get their daily living from the streets. But the main problem has been the growing gap between the rich and the poor. The solution to this problem can therefore not be in some tokenist programmes that are neither well thought-out nor enduring. While the issue of economic pressures may not be peculiar to Nigeria, the situation is becoming desperate for most citizens despite the denial by some delusional politicians. To compound the challenge, many basic services such as education, health and infrastructure are decrepit or in short supply, while a huge demographic crisis is looming.
Most recent reports indicate that one out of every three Nigerian children under the age of five is suffering from chronic malnutrition. This implies a marked increase in susceptibility to infections and contributes to child mortality. Yet hunger is both a cause and consequence of malnutrition, as people on low income tend to have worse diets, while people who lack adequate nutrition struggle harder to extricate themselves from poverty. But it remains disturbing that relevant authorities in Nigeria cannot address the causes of malnutrition that have continued to deprive over half of our children (and mothers) of a healthy and productive life span.
The consequences of this situation are not only for the victims but also those who feed fat at the expense of the poor in both the public and private sectors. The federal government and authorities in the 36 states must work to address a situation in which many Nigerians are going to bed with less than a survival diet.
