Nigeria talks big — biggest economy in Africa, fastest-growing at times — yet the basics fail us. Roads collapse, power is unreliable, factories struggle on diesel, hospitals are overstretched, and ordinary people pay the price. The numbers behind the drama tell a blunt story: headline growth hides structural failure.
Public debt is ballooning. According to the Debt Management Office, total public debt stood at about ₦149.4 trillion in Q1 2025 — and that figure can swell rapidly if new borrowing proposals are approved. This is not abstract accounting; it means future budgets, future taxes, and future austerity for ordinary Nigerians while debt services gobble resources that should fund schools, hospitals and roads.
Yes, GDP growth returned in spurts — driven largely by oil and services — but growth without productive industry is hollow. The World Bank’s recent analysis shows states pumping revenue windfalls into capital projects, yet Nigeria still faces huge infrastructure gaps and low manufacturing capacity. The services-and-oil growth story masks weak industrialisation and dependence on imports for finished goods and critical inputs. That’s dangerous for a country that aspires to be an industrial hub.
Manufacturers have been hammered by currency shocks, spiking import bills and erratic power. The Financial Times reports closures and painful contractions in factories after repeated naira devaluations; yes, some firms are adapting with local sourcing, but the sector’s recovery is fragile and selective. You cannot build a sustainable export economy by hoping that a few firms will become miracles overnight while the rest drown in energy bills and logistic chaos.
Meanwhile, macro numbers and lived reality diverge. GDP headlines look respectable, but inflation, joblessness, falling real wages, and collapsing public services mean that growth isn’t trickling down. A 3% growth quarter does not feed families who queue for hours for fuel, whose children study under tattered roofs, or whose businesses die because power is unreliable. The IMF and Reuters analyses show modest growth but warn the gains are fragile and uneven — driven by oil output and services, not broad-based industrial revival.
This is not a technocratic quibble — it’s a moral failure. We have the resources and talent to fix this. What we lack is political will, fiscal prudence, and a reordering of priorities so that public funds rebuild power, roads, local industry, healthcare and education — not just glossy projects that feed contractors and decorate capital cities.
If you are tired of the rhetoric, do one thing: demand accountability. Ask where debt goes, insist that revenue windfalls fund infrastructure that serves citizens, not convoys; push for genuine industrial policy, cheap reliable power and transparent procurement. If we keep applauding GDP headlines while our hospitals rot and our young people queue for work that doesn’t exist, we are complicit.
Nigeria can be more than a headline. But it won’t be, unless we stop treating growth as an excuse for complacency and start treating governance like stewardship. The political class has been robbing the future; it’s time to make them pay — not in insults, but at the ballot box and through relentless civic pressure.
