Recent efforts by the President Bola Tinubu-led administration to attract substantial foreign investments into Nigeria in 2026 are commendable, but they are fraught with many challenges that need attention if the efforts are to yield the desired fruits. The President’s projection to attract up to US$20 billion to the country in 2026 is a good dream that will require a lot of strategic planning and work to come to fruition. This is because there are lots of regulatory hurdles like bloated bureaucracies and recurring security challenges that have, over the years, constituted obstacles in attracting foreign investments into the country.

This is aside from the infrastructure deficit that adversely affects the retention of interest by foreigners in the economy. The deficits include a poor power supply, which exacerbates the operating costs of foreign enterprises, as well as foreign exchange pressure related to the repatriation of funds and dividend payouts, among others. All these diminish the interest of foreigners in the economy. The beautiful bride, however, in relation to foreign capital importation, has been the very volatile portfolio investments, which invariably create dislocations and instability in the management of the domestic economy.
  
In view of these daunting challenges, it becomes quite difficult to understand how the administration intends to attract this $20 billion into the economy when the year is half gone and the country is approaching the general elections in a few months. This is a period when foreign investors are largely sceptical as to what direction economic policy will take in the coming years, depending on the outcome of the Presidential elections of January 2027. In this regard, the remaining part of 2026 could be rightly classified as a sort of “wait and see” era for foreign investors, even among those that might have made prior commitments to invest in specific sectors of the economy.
 
This brings to the fore the recent trip of Mr President to Kigali, Rwanda, for the Africa CEO Forum, regarded as the largest gathering of private sector leaders on the continent, where various engagements with prospective foreign investors took place. The 2026 edition of the Forum, organised by Jeune Afrique Media Group, in partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), had over 2,000 business leaders, investors and policymakers from over 90 countries participating.

According to the Presidency, the strategy of the Tinubu administration is aimed at positioning Nigeria as a preferred investment destination in Africa. The idea, according to the administration, is for the President’s international investment engagements to be strategic platforms designed to market Nigeria’s reforms and reassure investors about the country’s economic direction. The highlighting of key reforms undertaken by the administration, such as the mobilisation of the market for foreign exchange unification, fiscal adjustments and regulatory reforms aimed at improving the ease of doing business and enhancing transparency in the economy, is quite instructive. According to the authorities, these are aimed at enhancing renewed investor interest in Nigeria’s oil and gas, mining and renewable energy sectors, noting that recent policy measures helped restore confidence among global investors. However, what remains is what the outcome of these “strategic engagements” would be and how the economy would benefit from this foreign engagement. As Nigerians await the outcome, many stakeholders have perceived that similar foreign engagements in the past have been mere ceremonial outings with little or no benefits to the economy.
 
Alongside all these is the recent signing of a 65 million euro development pact agreement between Nigeria and Germany, which marked a major milestone in the strengthening of bilateral development cooperation between the two countries, aimed at deepening collaboration across strategic sectors critical to Nigeria’s development agenda, including agricultural transformation and food systems, climate and energy transition, sustainable economic development, skills acquisition and employment, health systems strengthening, and peaceful and inclusive societies. These are good developments, at least on face value, but the question is to what extent these agreements have enhanced the growth of the Nigerian economy, with the benefit of hindsight. 
 
The key issue is that Nigeria has shied away from addressing the debilitating factors inhibiting the flow of foreign capital into the country. These issues highlighted earlier have largely remained unaddressed by successive administrations, even prior to the onset of the Bola Tinubu-led administration. The issue of infrastructural deficit has substantially remained unattended to in addition to the recurring regulatory hurdles and foreign exchange challenges in spite of the reforms in the foreign exchange market by the Tinubu administration.
 
The needed focus is for the Tinubu administration to focus more on the domestic economy and minimise unnecessary foreign trips in search for investments. Any interest shown by investors in the Nigerian economy must be fully complemented with the provision of an environment conducive to doing business; else the investors would find it difficult to operate in it, whenever they plan to invest here. The domestic business climate is very important and this is where the government should place its focus on. If this is properly addressed, foreign investors would jump over each other and the desire to attract as much as $20 billion investments into the country in 2026 would not be difficult to attain.