THE WORLD Bank does a reasonable job at identifying the problem – multifaceted and deepening poverty with associated insecurity. However, their solution is just more of the same, with dreams of “inclusive growth and job creation” that is pro-poor. It accepts there is growing poverty with a third of the population now being “food insecure” – not knowing where their next meal will come from. And around 80% already being below the poverty line or in danger of being tipped below – with the next hospital bill, rent or school fees.
Its recently issued 2026 Streamlined Country Diagnostic picks old data to try and claim that the country’s “economic growth has not kept pace with population growth”. However, the Bank’s own, more recent data, shows that per capita GDP grew by 70% from 1999 to 2025 and the size of the economy is now four and a half times larger than it was at the turn of the millennium.
Overall, the World Bank identifies the key problem of chronic poverty, resulting from high inequality. But it is stuck with its mantra of private sector growth providing the answer. This is despite the fact that its own evidence indicates that this is not working. Poverty continues to grow whilst wealth per person consistently grows over the decades.
The IMF also shows that economic growth is currently more than 4% whilst population growth is only a little more than 2%. As a result, the Bank continues to claim that private sector economic growth can address poverty, especially if “inclusive growth and job creation” is achieved (but with no idea how this may happen). Later it admits that “[e]ven accelerated economic growth and employment will not be enough to lift people out of poverty”.
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A former President of the World Bank recently accepted that there is a problem of “the concentration of income and wealth at the top”. A decent minimum wage and free public primary health and education would go a long way to solving this problem. If the minimum wage had maintained the same share of the growing wealth created per person in Nigeria since 1999, it would now be at least a million naira a month. This would address the problem later identified in the World Bank document that “many jobs do not generate earnings that are high enough to escape poverty”.
An increased minimum wage and the end of cash payments in primary schools and primary health centres would greatly reduce corruption. This would begin to reduce the massive levels of looting at the centre of government and really allow investment in public infrastructure. This and the provision of constant electricity to factories and offices could enable even higher levels of economic growth (and provide electric power to the 40% of the population that do not currently have it). This could provide a much better life for all – but the World Bank does not see it that way.
In addition to not using the most recent statistics, the World Bank is careless with its accuracy. For example, it implies that Jigawa State is in the Northwest. It calls for the economy to “diversify away from oil”, but the next sentence indicates that oil and gas now provide only 4% of the economy. Later in the same paragraph, it does not explain how oil revenue is “stifling investment in other sectors and entrenching a high level of corruption”. Neither does it provide any strategy for reducing such looting beyond “redirecting oil revenues to address the enormous human capital and infrastructure gaps”.
The way to ensure increased equality most effectively is through a combination of policies leading to a higher minimum wage and greater investment in public health and education services. The minimum wage must be increased. Health services and education must be provided free of charge. This will only be achieved if the collective power of the working class is robustly used to force these changes.
The World Bank does identify that spending on health and education, especially by states, is far too low and declining. But then undermines this clarity by claiming greater efficiency could allow the same services to be provided with much less investment.
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It highlights that Nigeria has “very poor health outcomes” that are worse than most middle-income countries. Access to modern health services is denied, at least in part according to the World Bank due to “financial expenses”. As a result, “Nigerian women face the highest maternal mortality rates globally”. Two-in-five children under five face chronic hunger and their mortality rates are “substantially higher among the poor than the rich”.
Overall, the World Bank identifies the key problem of chronic poverty, resulting from high inequality. But it is stuck with its mantra of private sector growth providing the answer. This is despite the fact that its own evidence indicates that this is not working. Poverty continues to grow whilst wealth per person consistently grows over the decades.
It is the resulting growing inequality that we should be addressing. The World Bank thinks this will be achieved by continuing to talk to the corrupt elite. But history shows us that this will not achieve anything.
The way to ensure increased equality most effectively is through a combination of policies leading to a higher minimum wage and greater investment in public health and education services. The minimum wage must be increased. Health services and education must be provided free of charge. This will only be achieved if the collective power of the working class is robustly used to force these changes.
Nkechi is a member of Socialist Labour.
