ActionAid Nigeria has challenged the Federal Government to attach clear targets, timelines and publicly measurable indicators to President Bola Tinubu’s declaration that Nigeria will “defeat” poverty, warning that economic growth alone cannot demonstrate that millions of Nigerians are becoming more prosperous.
The development organisation said President Tinubu’s declaration in his 66th Independence Day address that Nigeria was moving from an “age of reform” to an “age of prosperity” was significant, but insisted that prosperity must ultimately be reflected in the daily lives of citizens through higher real incomes, improved access to food and basic services, decent employment and safer communities.
Tinubu had stated in his Independence Day address: “Our objective is not to manage poverty more efficiently. We will defeat it.”
But ActionAid said the declaration should now be subjected to measurable tests that would allow Nigerians to determine, year by year, whether the government was achieving the promised transformation.
According to the organisation, the scale of Nigeria’s poverty challenge makes such accountability essential, citing the World Bank’s latest assessment which estimated that 50.8 per cent of Nigerians, representing about 123 million people, lived in extreme poverty in 2025, while 69.6 per cent lived below the $4.20-a-day poverty line for lower-middle-income countries.
ActionAid said the government should therefore be able to demonstrate how many Nigerians were moving out of poverty, whether household incomes were rising in real terms, whether fewer families were skipping meals and whether social protection programmes were reaching those most in need.
It also called for progress in healthcare, education, decent work and other basic services to form part of the measurement of national prosperity.
The organisation argued that poverty could not be considered defeated simply because selected economic indicators were improving.
“Poverty cannot be declared defeated because economic indicators are improving. It will be defeated when people can feel the difference at home,” it said.
Nigeria’s recent economic figures, however, point to some improvement at the macroeconomic level.
The National Bureau of Statistics reported that real Gross Domestic Product grew by 4.43 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, compared with 3.89 per cent in the first quarter, while headline inflation stood at 15.39 per cent in August.
Food inflation remained significantly higher at 19.57 per cent, underscoring the continuing pressure on household purchasing power.
ActionAid said the figures were important but raised the question of who was benefiting from the recovery, noting that economic growth must translate into decent jobs, higher real incomes, reduced inequality and more affordable food and transportation.
It said women, young people, persons with disabilities and communities historically excluded from economic opportunities should be deliberately included in the benefits of economic recovery.
The organisation also linked poverty reduction directly to food security and the safety of farmers, saying the President’s vision of a Nigeria where farmers could cultivate their land safely, produce more cheaply and earn decent returns should itself become a measurable national commitment.
It cited the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s latest assessment which estimated that nearly 36.3 million Nigerians faced severe acute food insecurity during the June-August 2026 lean season, including about 2.1 million people facing emergency levels of food insecurity.
According to ActionAid, conflict and economic pressures remained major drivers of the food crisis, making security a critical component of any serious poverty-reduction strategy.
The organisation said government investments in irrigation, mechanisation, improved seeds, storage, transportation and agricultural infrastructure would only deliver their intended impact if they reached smallholder farmers, particularly women farmers.
It further urged greater investment in climate-resilient and agroecological farming practices to reduce production costs, protect soil and biodiversity, strengthen local food systems and reduce farmers’ dependence on increasingly expensive external inputs.
ActionAid also argued that insecurity should be treated as a development indicator rather than solely as a security concern.
It said the government should measure security success by whether attacks were declining, farmers were returning safely to their farms, displaced families could return home, children could attend school without fear and markets and communities could function safely.
Speaking in Abuja, ActionAid Nigeria Country Director, Dr Andrew Mamedu, said the President’s pledge had created an opportunity for Nigerians to demand evidence-based accountability.
“The President has made a bold commitment that Nigeria will defeat poverty. Nigerians should now be able to hold the government to that commitment through clear, measurable results,” Mamedu said.
He added: “Economic growth matters, but the real evidence of prosperity is whether a family can afford nutritious food, whether a young person can find decent work, whether a woman farmer can cultivate her land safely and profitably, and whether Nigerians can live without fear in their communities.”
Mamedu said that if the country had genuinely entered an “age of prosperity”, the transformation should be reflected in measurable figures.
“If this is truly the beginning of an age of prosperity, then prosperity must have numbers, targets and timelines. We must be able to measure how many Nigerians are leaving poverty behind, not simply how much the economy is growing,” he said.
ActionAid consequently called on the Federal Government to translate the Independence Day commitments into clear, time-bound and publicly accessible targets covering poverty reduction, household incomes, food security, employment, social protection and community safety.
The organisation said Nigeria should recognise improvements in its economic performance while ensuring that national success was ultimately judged by whether fewer Nigerians were poor and hungry, more citizens had decent livelihoods, farmers could cultivate safely and ordinary households could experience the prosperity being promised.
The challenge, it said, was no longer simply whether Nigeria could record economic growth, but whether that growth would produce a demonstrable improvement in the lives of ordinary Nigerians.
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