A few days ago, the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr Bayo Onanuga, said state governments and local councils should be blamed for the 133 million Nigerians classified as multidimensionally poor.
“Who should be blamed for the 133 million Nigerians who are multidimensionally poor? The Federal Government? No. The states? Yes. The 774 local councils? Yes,” Onanuga said, while corroborating the position of a former Minister of State for Finance, Mr Clement Agba, in a video he shared.
According to Agba, while about 69.9 million Nigerians are financially poor and live below the two-dollar-a-day threshold, 133 million citizens are multidimensionally poor due to the lack of access to basic amenities, such as education, healthcare, potable water and sanitation. The former minister stressed that sub-national governments under Nigeria’s federal structure were responsible for providing those services.
In the second half of last year, the Presidency also noted that federal allocations to each of the 36 states had increased by more than 62 per cent in two years, indicating that the astronomical rise in the allocation freed up resources for states to develop.
Nigerians are familiar with consistent performance propaganda by successive governments, but if figures released periodically by the National Bureau of Statistics are a pointer, one can safely say that, on this particular issue, the Presidency is only reiterating the facts.
Figures from the Federation Account Allocation Committee show that subnational governments received N6.73tn between January and November 2025. This represents a 29.08 per cent increase when compared to the N5.02tn recorded in the same period of 2024. It is also well more than a 50 per cent increase over the total allocation in the corresponding periods of 2022/23.
For December 2025, states received N706.4bn out of the N1.969tn shared. January figures were not far from these. This brings us back to my last article, titled “Rivers Crisis: A word for outgoing governors”, where I pointed out the need for outgoing governors to prioritise competence/capacity above the mirage of being puppeteers for clueless puppets, who often turn out to be their greatest nightmares.
It is frustrating that, except for just a few, many of the states in Nigeria are being governed by individuals whose levels of experience, standards of education, and local and international exposure should have, at best, qualified them for councillorship positions. Just as many scholars have highlighted, outgoing leaders, who selfishly impose their “anointed boys” on stakeholders without genuine consultations, usually rob their communities of the good governance that, sadly, becomes the opportunity cost of pursuing a third-term agenda by proxy.
From lessons across Nigeria, the injuries inflicted on the states as a result of this egocentric succession style are more severe than the “breakfast” the anointed boys, most times, serve their benefactors.
With purposeful leadership, driven by chief executives who know their onions and can attract the best of brains to turn critical sectors around in no time, the humongous resources going to the states, aside from their internally generated revenue, should have helped, in no small measure, to reduce the poverty level drastically in Nigeria beyond the efforts of the central government.
Sadly, what do we see with the astronomical increase in federal allocations under the current administration? Governors celebrating laughable projects and, sometimes, payment of salaries in this century! How many civil servants do we even have in states compared with the entire population?
With the amount of resources available to them currently, an aggressive but altruistic IGR drive, and strategic win-win local and international development-oriented partnerships, governors can break this poverty level jinx and recreate the Western comfort in their territories. It is not only worrisome but absolutely shameful that Nigeria’s poverty level has been stuck at around 70 per cent for donkey’s years!
One cannot, however, focus on states alone without highlighting the problems with leadership generally, especially at the federal level in Nigeria.
In many developed nations, leaders strive to actualise their campaign promises before the next elections, not only because of the electoral process that they can’t manipulate, but more because they know that they need to impress the electorate above other contenders.
In Nigeria, I would say that (s)elected leaders, in terms of performance, have continued to disguise primary school results as university grades because the citizens allow them. Yes, the Federal Government appoints the heads of agencies and controls the institutions, but determined citizens can organise to safeguard the process.
Now that the Independent National Electoral Commission has completed its timetable and schedule of activities for the 2027 general election, while awaiting the amended Electoral Act, Nigerians do not need external observers to tell them that effective governance might have come to an end. Antecedent events have shown that the ABC of a typical Nigerian politician’s show of last-minute performance is usually centred on available resource avenues for successful electioneering.
Those who refuse to be fooled would know that even the focus of legislators at this critical period would automatically shift from the developmental bills before them to campaign “bills” from their teams. Cabinet members would also be preoccupied with protecting the pecuniary interests of their benefactors to earn a seat in the next government.
There is this age-long belief that a president would serve his two terms, whether opposition figures break their necks trying to resist it or not. But the myth was broken by former President Goodluck Jonathan’s defeat in 2015.
While many bootlickers around President Bola Tinubu, who may not mean well for him in the actual sense, may continue to tell him that the 2027 election is as good as won, I would rather advise that there is still time to make the modest gains recorded in the almost three years of his administration truly reflect in the “stomachs” of Nigerians. Circulating positive figures against big economic jargon will not make much sense to many Nigerians.
The first thing the President should do urgently, if he must change the narrative, is to clear unsafe cabinet cobwebs and position his administration for palpable wins. Many of the current ministers are mainly career politicians and political jobbers who have left their critical ministries suffering while pursuing political relevance.
He can appoint them as lords and mayors in his campaign structure so that they can display their talent more while allowing the right pegs to drive the right holes in the little time left. The next elections may not be business as usual.