World Bank: Nigeria’s crushing poverty to worsen despite oil wealth

Despite Nigeria’s natural resource wealth and repeated government assurances of progress, more citizens are expected to fall into poverty by 2027, the World Bank has warned in its latest Africa Pulse report.

The projection deals a blow to claims by the Bola Tinubu-led government that its reforms would lift millions of Nigerians out of poverty. Last year, Finance Minister Wale Edun stated that the administration was “on track” to achieving this goal. But new data from the World Bank suggests otherwise.

According to the report, Nigeria, alongside the Democratic Republic of Congo, is among a small group of resource-rich but fragile African nations where poverty is projected to rise. Between 2022 and 2027, poverty in these countries is expected to increase by 3.6 percentage points, making them the only group on the continent with worsening poverty rates.

This trend reflects a familiar pattern where resource wealth, when coupled with fragility or conflict, correlates with some of the highest poverty levels globally. In 2024, the average poverty rate among such countries stood at 46 percent – 13 percentage points higher than their more stable counterparts.

The World Bank said Sub-Saharan Africa remains home to the vast majority of the world’s extremely poor, accounting for 80 percent of the global total – roughly 560 million people in 2024. Half of them reside in just four countries, led by Nigeria.

The poverty outlook in Nigeria is particularly bleak, driven by economic underperformance, runaway inflation, and surging living costs. Despite projections that the region’s economy will grow to 4.3 percent by 2027, the report noted that such growth levels are “insufficient” to meaningfully reduce extreme poverty in Nigeria or elsewhere in the region.

This is compounded by income inequality and structural inefficiencies. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a 1-percent rise in GDP per capita results in just a 1-percent reduction in poverty—far below the 2.5 percent average in other regions. The World Bank said this is due to high inequality and a failure to allocate economic gains to the most vulnerable groups.

The report forecasts that poverty in the region will peak at 43.9 percent in 2025 and slightly decline to 43.2 percent by 2027. Yet, due to rapid population growth, the number of people living in poverty will still increase—from 576 million in 2025 to 589 million in 2027.

Urbanisation presents a glimmer of hope. The World Bank said cities could help reduce poverty if they are equipped to absorb the growing population with adequate infrastructure, services, and jobs. But for now, most of the region’s—and Nigeria’s—poverty remains concentrated in rural areas, with the path to meaningful relief still unclear.