“More Nigerians will become poor by 2027 – WORLD BANK” – VANGUARD, APRIL 25, 2025.

Acute poverty is already fuelling massive increase in all sorts of crime in Nigeria today.

Predicting that more Nigerians will become poorer in 2027 amounts to passing a vote of no confidence in ALL the governments of Nigeria; not just the Federal Government.

It is also a death sentence on several million citizens – because infant and maternal mortalities rise with poverty. The International Monetary Fund, IMF, had, a few days before the World Bank announcement, informed Nigerians that inflation will increase by the end of the year and by 2027 – making nonsense of the attempt to deceive people with rebasing the economy.

To rub salt on the gaping wound, we have just been told that Nigeria accounts for 15 percent of all poor people globally.

That percentage is set to increase by 2027.

The reasons are as concerning as the consequences.

Nigerian governments, federal and states, are gradually losing control. When Tinubu ordered the Governors of Plateau and Benue States to take control of their states, it was buck-passing of the worst kind. Governors are impotent.

 ALARMING CONSEQUENCES OF INCREASING POVERTY

  “The most dangerous person is someone who has nothing to lose.” A black American friend of mine, who fought in Vietnam in the 1960s, summarised for me why the US lost the war in these words: “We were fighting the Viet Congs, mostly people in rags but armed. They were unemployed and destitute when drafted and promised the equivalent of one dollar a day – if they survived and military rations every day. Without the army they had nothing; no homes to return to; no family waiting for them. By contrast, the American fighter wanted to stay alive and return home. They were ready to die; we wanted to live. We killed ten of them for each of us they hit; but more kept coming.”

General Westmoreland, who was the longest serving Commander of American forces during the war, assumed that comparative body count figures – how many Viet Congs were killed for each American who lost his life – would very quickly persuade the enemy to surrender.

He was wrong.

Being armed and presumably fighting for his country against imperialists gave the Viet Cong soldier two advantages he never had and would not have if he dropped the gun.

One, an armed gang on patrol was guaranteed food and other forms of social welfare (“man no be wood being one of them”) which the other poor, suffering and smiling, could never have. They could seize food, pillage, rape and commit atrocities with impunity – as long as they carried weapons and shot Americans.

The US Commander had to beg for more troops to be supplied whereas the leader of the North Vietnamese forces, Ho Chin Minh, did not have to worry about getting more troops.

Acute poverty and hunger brought hundreds of thousands to the recruitment centres everyday.

In the end, the millions of people who had nothing to lose wore down the US troops who wanted to stay alive – if possible.

Americans did not learn their lessons.

They backed the Shah of Iran and lost; then tried their luck in Afghanistan and suffered another humiliating defeat. Each time the world’s greatest military power was taught that superior arms alone don’t win battles – when other human elements intrude.

THE RISE OF BOKO HARAM AND HERDSMEN

  “All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

If you are wondering what all these have to do with Nigeria, allow me to patiently explain to you why all Nigerians are living in desperation.

Herdsmen and Boko Haram represent the two most dreaded terrorist groups in Nigeria today.

The two share one thing in common. They are partly supported and protected by powerful Northerners.

Mention of Northerners is deliberate because nobody in his right senses would accuse any Southerner of being complicit in the atrocities committed by the hoodlums threatening the existence of the nation.

While the latter had been largely confined to the Northeast, the former is nationwide and a source of danger to every Nigerian everywhere.

Truth is they were not in existence until after Obasanjo left office.  

“COAS vows tough offensive as Boko Haram kills 40 in Borno” – Report, April 30, 2025.

The report about killings in Borno came after another report in VANGUARD of April 27, 2025, titled, “We have spent over N300m on ransom, ECWA laments”, was released.

Sandwiched between the two blood-chilling stories was one which must have escaped the attention of many Nigerians.

The Borno State government announced that it has “rehabilitated 300,000 repentant Boko Haram insurgents”.

How and why the Governor of Borno State became a court of law to try and discharge heinous criminals who have killed over 200,000 fellow citizens is a mystery – which only the Governor can unravel.

Insurgency is a federal crime; which should only be tried by federal courts. Why and how the Federal Government allowed Borno State to pardon 300,000 mass murderers – with scant regard for their victims, numbering over 1.2 million – is a deeper mystery.

What is not mysterious is the fact that 300,000 hardened killers have been let loose on the Northeast of Nigeria by Professor Zulum; and, nobody should be surprised that the state is now on fire again.  

The obvious questions are: Who told Zulum that the hoodlums released are repentant?

How are they employed?

The truth is; a captured or badly injured hoodlum is not repentant and cannot be said to be rehabilitated without a job. Otherwise, he is merely on break; and would pick up the gun again at the earliest opportunity.

American troops learnt this from the enemy soldiers captured.

Nobody can claim to rehabilitate a jobless man who has been trained to use a gun to extort fellow citizens.

Boko Haram was a “gift” of the YarÁdua/Jonathan governments to Nigeria.

The danger to Nigerian lives, particularly in the Northeast, has lasted sixteen years; and there is no end in sight. Herdsmen overtook all the other terrorist groups only after 2016 – when the rape of Agatu was approved by the FG. Professional managers, studying decision making under conditions of uncertainty, know very well that doing nothing is also a decision – which might bring repercussions.

When the FG ignored the genocide at Agatu, it deliberately or inadvertently, sent out a powerful message – genocide by herdsmen is permissible; your Life Patron in Abuja will protect you from reprisals.

It was a grievous blunder; and everybody, Buhari included, is now desperate on account of unexpected developments.

Buhari fled from Daura to Kaduna because the security situation in his state had deteriorated so much his safety cannot be guaranteed.

POVERTY IS THE LINK BETWEEN ALL THE FORMS OF INSECURITIES

  “The poor cannot sleep because they are hungry; and the rich cannot sleep because the poor are hungry and awake” – Nigeria’s Professor Sam Aluko: 1929-2012.

Professor Aluko was the man whose PhD in Economics persuaded me finally to ditch Medicine for Economics.

I thank God for the change of course. Nobody in Nigeria sleeps comfortably any more.

Nobody is immune from insecurity. When the World Bank declared that poverty in Nigeria will increase by 3.6 per cent this year, there were at least three obvious conclusions implied.

First, it means approximately 7,920,000 more Nigerians will be added to the pool of those living desperate lives.

Over 122 nations worldwide have populations less than 7.92 million. Second, the government in an economy which increases the number of people living in poverty by nearly 8 million cannot by any stretch of imagination, claim to be performing well.

Almost all will be unemployed; the number of idle hands will rise and the Devil’s workshop will be fuller.

Third, the security situation will inevitably get worse because, poor people don’t just stay home and starve to death.

They resort to all sorts of means to survive.  

WHY MARCHING ORDERS TO SECURITY CHIEFS DON’T WORK

  President Tinubu had issued several “Marching Orders” to his security chiefs. He might not realise it, Buhari also did the same – to no avail.

 FROM MAIGADI TO MEGIDA IN ONE ADMINISTRATION

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”  – John F Kennedy, US President, 1917-1963

If you don’t know that Nigeria is already involved in a violent revolution, then get ready to read the truth and tremble. Nigerian intellectuals have always asserted that “what is needed in this country is a revolution”.

Unfortunately, they failed to recognise it when it arrived.

The Nigerian political elite, like those in any country, kept their attention on the erudite promoters of violent change. Those they either paid-off or wiped out or hounded out of the country.

At any rate, the intellectual revolutionaries were busy fighting the last war.

The new revolution began with unknown thousands of faceless men and some women who have now changed Nigeria forever.

This country will never be the same again.

“Right now, bandits and kidnappers are probably holding another set of victims – perhaps, the eighth set after Buhari  promised on March 1, 2021 to make the abduction of school children the last”.

Recollect my warning to Nigerians – “If you believe that, you will believe anything.”

Buhari had made a promise he should not because the security forces were not ready to help him redeem it.

The bandits now openly treat the President of Nigeria with contempt. He asked for it. That article was written in 2021; Buhari ignored it.

The consequences are here. Tinubu should stop issuing Marching Orders; they don’t work.