Nigeria’s Future Is No Longer a Theory. It Is a Test of Consistency.

Why reform cannot be optional once pain has been paid for

Goldman Sachs has suggested that Nigeria could become the world’s sixth-largest economy, largely on the basis of its population size and land mass. In purely theoretical terms, that projection is defensible. Scale matters. Demographics matter. Geography matters.

But Nigeria also sits at the opposite end of the distribution. It is equally plausible that it could drift toward chronic underperformance—or even state failure. Two years ago, that latter outcome was clearly more likely than it is today. The balance has shifted, but it remains far from assured.

Recent policy choices have been necessary and overdue. Exchange-rate unification, the removal of fuel and electricity subsidies, and a more realistic fiscal stance have begun to restore macro coherence. The naira has stabilised, price distortions are being reduced, and capital allocation is slowly becoming more rational.

Crucially, the pain of adjustment was endured and is still being endured. For more than a year now, households and businesses have absorbed higher costs, inflationary pressure, and a sustained squeeze on disposable income. These reforms were not theoretical—they were lived through, and they continue to weigh on daily economic life. That matters, because it fundamentally changes what must come next.

Macroeconomic reform alone, however, is not enough.

Nigeria’s most binding long-term constraint is not capital, natural resources, or even governance in the narrow sense. It is the skills gap. Basic literacy has deteriorated over the past three decades, while the credibility of tertiary and postgraduate education has been deeply compromised. In many institutions, grades themselves have been sold—regardless of whether a student had passed or failed—destroying the signalling function of qualifications altogether.

The labour market has adapted, but imperfectly. Prospective employers increasingly assess potential directly—through interviews, testing, probationary periods, and on-the-job evaluation—rather than relying on domestic qualifications. At the same time, major employers show a clear preference for foreign degrees, particularly from well-known overseas institutions.

This preference does not imply that candidates educated abroad are inherently superior. It reflects risk management. In an environment where domestic credentials no longer reliably signal competence, foreign qualifications offer a lower-risk proxy for cognitive capability and academic rigour. The result, however, is that preference is disproportionately given to the children of the elite—those able to afford overseas education—regardless of whether they are the best candidates.

Exceptional individuals will always emerge. Some of the most capable professionals Nigeria has produced were educated abroad, and often at the very best institutions. One of the most capable engineers I have worked with held a doctorate from Cambridge. He was outstanding—but he was also, by definition, not representative.

At the top end of the distribution, such individuals still break through. At the bottom end, the struggle is fundamentally different. For those educated locally, without elite networks or the means to study abroad, the system is close to impassable. Many capable individuals are screened out before they are ever assessed.

This is not a moral critique of individuals operating within broken systems. Many academics are supporting families on incomes that fall below subsistence levels, often with limited alternatives. That context matters. But it does not justify the selling of grades or the erosion of academic standards. The behaviour and the conditions that enable it are separate issues—and both must be addressed. The outcome has been severe: credential inflation without capability, distorted hiring signals, rising inequality, and wasted human potential.

The good news is that this is not irreversible.

More importantly, the hardest part has already been done. Prices have been corrected, subsidies removed, and distortions confronted. These are the decisions governments usually avoid. Nigeria has not avoided them. That means the country is no longer fighting gravity. The question now is not whether reform is possible, but whether its gains are reinvested intelligently to generate multiplier effects across the economy.

As the government’s financial position improves, the central policy question shifts from reform itself to resource allocation. Power generation and distribution no longer need to dominate public spending. With electricity tariffs now closer to economic reality—and improving further as the naira strengthens—the sector can increasingly be left to private capital. Where price signals work, the state should step back.

That creates fiscal space—and obligation.

Public resources should now be redeployed toward education and primary healthcare, where market mechanisms alone cannot repair the damage. These are not soft social priorities; they are productivity multipliers. Without credible basic education and functional primary healthcare, the returns on infrastructure, industrial policy, and foreign investment are structurally capped.

The populace has already endured real hardship—and continues to do so. That reality changes the nature of political responsibility. Once a population has been asked to endure pain in the service of reform, continuity ceases to be a policy preference and becomes a moral obligation.

The single greatest risk to the gains now being made is political reversal. The danger is not technical failure, but the temptation to promise relief by undoing reform—reintroducing subsidies, distorting prices, and politicising the exchange rate once again. Such a reversal would not merely slow progress; it would waste sacrifice and make future reform far harder.

If continuity holds, however, the upside is powerful. Reinvesting reform gains into education and primary healthcare would deliver multiplier effects that compound over time: higher productivity, broader participation, lower inequality, and a labour force capable of absorbing capital rather than repelling it. This is how reform becomes growth rather than austerity.

Nigeria’s future is no longer pre-ordained in either direction. It is now a conditional outcome. But for the first time in a long while, the conditions for success exist. The difference between becoming a global economic heavyweight and remaining perpetually “next decade’s story” will be decided not by ambition, but by consistency—by whether the gains already secured are protected, reinvested, and allowed to compound.