The real question isn’t whether Nigeria can make it. It’s whether we’re willing to do the work.
2024 in Nigeria was brutal. We all felt it. Businesses that had been stable for years suddenly found themselves on the brink. I know real estate developers who, after buying all their materials, had to start refunding customers. Why? Because the numbers didn’t make sense anymore. They couldn’t deliver at the rates they had promised.
That’s the word: instability. It feels like the ground beneath our feet is constantly shifting. And it forces you to ask a very big, very heavy question:
How do you actually build a country?
I spend a lot of time thinking about this. Not because I’m a politician. I’m not. I’m someone who builds platforms, studies systems, and cares deeply about whether the lowest members of society can thrive. And I’m someone who has lived in two very different worlds: Nigeria, where I grew up, and Russia, where I studied medicine on a government scholarship. That contrast taught me something important about what makes a country succeed.
If you look at Nigeria today, you might almost conclude that this country is not going to make it. I get it. The problems are overwhelming. We have deep geopolitical tensions. We have ethnic and religious divisions that feel wider than ever. We have a currency that was in freefall and still balancing, an education system that’s failing, and a security crisis that makes it nearly impossible to plan for the future. It can feel hopeless. It can feel like we are uniquely broken.
But history tells us something important. It would be very difficult today to imagine that Singapore was once in a similar position: divided, poor, with no natural resources and surrounded by hostile neighbours. It would be difficult to imagine that post-Mao China, or an India crippled by bureaucracy and poverty, would eventually become global economic powers. But they did. And it didn’t happen overnight. It took decades. Decades of persistent, painful, disciplined work. Decades of sacrifice for the long-term future.
So the question is not whether it can be done. The question is how. And that starts with a simple but uncomfortable truth: building a successful country is not the same thing as holding political power. We’ve seen countries do well under dictatorships and badly under dictatorships. We’ve seen countries do well under democracies and badly under democracies. This is not a political argument. It’s a prescription for what makes a country successful; and that always comes back to the people.
Success Starts With the People at the Bottom
A country cannot be successful until the needs of its people are met. And the benchmark we should care about is not the wealth of the richest. It’s the standard of living for the lowest members of society, and the disparity between that and the top. I don’t care how much the disparity is, as long as the people at the base are doing well. Anybody should be able to pursue their dreams and do incredibly well, but the people at the lowest rung of society should also have it relatively good.
I’ve lived in Russia. I’ve consumed almost everything from the US; the movies, the Silicon Valley narrative, the investor culture. I’ve always been ambitious. But one thing that stayed with me from Russia is this: at the very least, the society catered to those at the bottom. There was a floor. That’s not a political endorsement; it’s an observation. When you’ve seen both worlds, you start to ask: what would it take for Nigeria to have that kind of floor; and more?
The answer does not start with a specific political structure. It starts with agreement.
First: We Have to Agree We Want to Succeed
No country can succeed unless its people have agreed that this is something they want to do. One of the problems we face in Nigeria is that we were never given a real chance to collectively decide. The country was imposed on us. The borders, the structure, the “unity”; much of it was decided by colonial and post-colonial forces, not by a conscious national conversation about what we want to be.
So the first step is to agree. We need to agree on what the standard of society is. We need to agree on what we actually want to achieve, what kind of society we want to create, and what values will guide us. America is one of the greatest countries in history in part because of its founding values; because it’s an idea, an ideal. People immediately understand what it means to be American. But do we really understand what it means to be Nigerian? That question is uncomfortable because we haven’t answered it together. For Russia, even without a single crisp “idea” like America’s, there is at least a shared sense of history, suffering, and resilience. We need to consciously develop that kind of national integrity. Not by force, but by conversation and choice.
And once we’ve developed these beliefs, we need to constantly remind ourselves that this is what we agreed on. That forms the basis for whatever “propaganda” the country uses, and I use that word deliberately. In English, “propaganda” has a negative connotation because we’ve mostly seen it used for manipulation. But in Russian, the word simply means anything done to influence the public. It doesn’t have to be bad. Propaganda can be useful when it helps people understand what kind of country we’re building and where we’re headed, as long as we’ve all had a say in deciding that direction. We also need to agree on the rule of law: what rules apply to everyone, and how they are enforced. Without that, nothing else holds.
You Don’t Need 200 Million People to Agree on Day One
You might say: “But Nigeria is different.” And you’d be right. Singapore is a tiny city-state. Nigeria is a nation of more than 200 million people. Singapore had a dominant cultural framework with relatively aligned values. Nigeria is a symphony of hundreds of languages, cultures, and identities. How do you possibly get everyone to agree?
The truth is: you don’t. You don’t need 200 million people to agree from day one. You just need critical mass. History is not changed by 100% of the population. It is changed by a dedicated, aligned, and persistent minority. During the American Revolution, historians estimate that only about a third of the population actively supported independence. But that one-third was enough. The Civil Rights movement in the United States didn’t start as a majority movement either. It began with a morally driven core group willing to sacrifice for change. Eventually, the rest of society followed.
Our challenge is not getting 200 million Nigerians to agree on everything. Our challenge is finding and uniting that critical mass. And that work starts with shared values. This doesn’t mean everyone must share the same religion or culture. But there must be certain baseline agreements: that every person has the right to life and property; that the rule of law matters; that people have the freedom to express ideas, criticise power, and pursue their own lives; so long as they do not harm others. Without those shared foundations, it is impossible to build a functioning society. If we can agree on those basics, we can begin building something real.
The Four Pillars
If you want to build a country, there are four pillars that matter.
1. Human Capital
Countries that succeed invest relentlessly in their people. Singapore had no oil. No gold. No massive natural resources. What they had was people. So they educated them. Look at India: between 2014 and 2019, they launched roughly one new university every week. They invested heavily in developing talent.
Nigerians talk constantly about japa, i.e, leaving the country. Many see it as brain drain. But the real problem isn’t that Nigerians leave. The problem is that they often see no reason to come back. Migration can be a powerful advantage. Exposure to the rest of the world builds skills, knowledge, and networks. The goal shouldn’t be to stop Nigerians from leaving. The goal should be to create a country worth returning to. And education must go far beyond traditional universities. We need vocational training, apprenticeships, coding bootcamps, leadership programmes, and technical schools. Nigeria has tens of millions of underserved learners. If we want to build a functioning country, we must build the systems that train them.
2. Self-Sustenance
Technology is important. Nigeria’s tech ecosystem has achieved incredible things. But technology alone cannot sustain a nation. You cannot code your way out of a food crisis. You cannot eat software. A country must be able to feed itself and produce essential goods. That means investing heavily in agriculture and manufacturing.
People say: “We can’t compete with China.” But this isn’t about competing with China. It’s about partnership and resilience. Look at Russia. Despite enormous global sanctions, its economy remained resilient largely because it can produce food, energy, and critical goods domestically. Self-sustenance is not about isolation. It’s about national security. If Nigeria wants to be strong and independent in the long run, we must be able to produce what we need and feed our own people.
3. Infrastructure
Power. Transportation. Logistics. Data networks. These are the physical systems that allow a nation to function. Without reliable electricity, businesses cannot operate efficiently. Without strong transportation networks, goods cannot move. Without data infrastructure, modern digital economies cannot grow. Infrastructure is the hardware of a nation. Building it requires speed, discipline, and smart financing. Sometimes it also requires the courage to admit when existing systems are broken and need to be rebuilt from scratch.
4. Policy and Governance
This is where many countries succeed; or fail. The role of the private sector is to create value, maximise efficiency, and innovate. That’s what businesses are supposed to do. The role of government is different. The role of government is to maximise access, to opportunities, resources, and infrastructure, for the population. And the most powerful tool government has is not direct intervention. It’s policy. Government doesn’t need to build every school. It needs to create policies that make it easy for thousands of schools to exist.
We already have proof that this works. Look at Nigeria’s fintech sector. Through regulatory frameworks and policies, the financial system opened the door for innovation. The government didn’t build the apps. It created the playground. And what happened? An explosion of companies. Paystack. Flutterwave. Interswitch. OPay. Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem leapfrogged many traditional banking systems around the world. That is the model. Government sets the rules and creates the environment. The private sector builds.
So How Do You Build a Country?
You start by agreeing on shared values. You invest relentlessly in your people. You build an economy capable of sustaining itself. You construct the infrastructure that connects everything. And you create a system where government enables innovation instead of stifling it.
But none of this happens quickly. This is not a four-year election cycle project. This is a forty-plus-year generational project. It will require sacrifice. It will require patience. And it will require an unshakable belief in the future.
So the real question is not: “Can Nigeria make it?”
The real question is: Are we willing to do the work?