NIGERIA’S economic recovery under President Bola Tinubu has failed to translate into improved living conditions for millions of poor citizens, while wealthier Nigerians have benefited from stronger investment performance, according to Atedo Peterside.
Peterside, the founder of Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc and Anap Foundation, said the economic reforms introduced by the administration over the past three years had produced sharply different outcomes for Nigerians, leaving low-income households struggling with food costs and other essential expenses.
Speaking on Monday during an interview with Arise TV, Peterside argued that the government had not sufficiently addressed the hardship facing vulnerable households through effective social protection programmes.
He said the economic gains experienced by upper-middle-class Nigerians, particularly in financial investments, contrasted with the deteriorating purchasing power of poorer citizens.
Peterside said: “If you’re upper middle class, I can probably show on the blackboard investments in the stock exchange and all that stuff.”
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He added that while wealthier Nigerians might have become financially better off, millions of low-income workers were finding it increasingly difficult to meet their basic needs.
“If you’re a low income worker, like somebody without much savings and struggling to eat — what 100 million Nigerians have to do, to eat two meals a day and struggling to pay your bills, I can show you that you’re a lot worse off,” he said.
Poverty remains a regional challenge
Peterside said poverty was unevenly distributed across the country, with several regions experiencing particularly high levels of deprivation.
Citing 2025 figures from TheCable Index, he identified the North-West, North-East, North-Central and South-South as areas where poverty remained widespread.
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He said only about 12 states and the Federal Capital Territory had poverty rates below 50 percent, with most of the states concentrated in the South-West.
Anambra was the exception in the South-East, while Edo and Delta were the two states in the South-South with poverty rates below the 50 per cent threshold.
According to Peterside, these regional disparities could influence how Nigerians assess the impact of the government’s economic policies, as the experience of economic reforms differs significantly across geographical locations.
He also expressed concern that policymakers might not fully appreciate the depth of poverty in affected communities because of limited exposure to the conditions confronting residents.
“High poverty in Nigeria is largely a zonal problem. It is a problem of the North-West, of the North-East, of the North-Central, and of the South-South,” he said.
Peterside maintained that the absence of adequate social safety nets remained a major weakness in the government’s reform programme, particularly for Nigerians whose incomes and savings offer little protection against rising living costs.
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Nigeria’s poverty in numbers
Nigeria recorded the world’s largest increase in the number of people living in multidimensional poverty, with an additional 17.9 million Nigerians falling into poverty between 2021 and 2024, according to the 2026 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index.
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The report, released by the United Nations Development Programme and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, found that Nigeria’s progress in reducing poverty between 2018 and 2021 was subsequently reversed.
The report stated, “In absolute terms, the largest increase in the number of poor people is seen in Nigeria, where although poverty had decreased in the previous period (2018–2021), in the recent period (2021–2024), 17.9 million people became multidimensionally poor, followed by 5.3 million in Afghanistan.”
According to a World Bank report, the share of Nigerians living below the poverty line increased from 56 percent in 2023 to 61 percent in 2024, before rising further to 63 per cent in 2025, which is equivalent to about 140 million people.
The global lender disclosed this in its Nigeria Development Update (April 2026) entitled ‘Nigeria’s Tomorrow Must Start Today: The Case for Early Childhood Development,‘ released in Abuja in April.
