At a time when the cost-of-living crisis is rocking the country’s foundations, any government plan to reduce poverty among most citizens will excite many people in hopes of relief. Expectedly, some people will be sceptical, at least in the immediate term, given their knowledge of past similar interventions that failed to achieve their objectives and make a significant impact on the lives of the targeted citizens, for the overall benefit of society. But the narrative can be changed. All that is required is sincerity on the part of the government and the political will of the leaders in power to make such interventions work.

The five coordinated social and development programmes worth $3.05 billion recently unveiled by President Bola Tinubu ‘to accelerate poverty reduction’ are the latest in the series of such programmes in the country. It is assumed that a lot of thought went into packaging the initiative to make it work.

However, the implementation strategy and what the people should expect in concrete terms at every stage of the programme are yet to be made clearer to Nigerians so they can monitor and eventually decide whether the intervention was really to lift people out of poverty or to surreptitiously make some persons millionaires and billionaires, particularly ahead of the 2027 general elections.

Nigerians have been told that the aim is to reduce poverty, and they are waiting to see it do so in a visible and measurable sense. This latest move should not fail like the previous ones; there should be no excuses. The hardship in the country is becoming unbearable.

On July 16, 2026, President Tinubu, represented by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, unveiled the programme, which he said was aimed at reducing poverty, strengthening community resilience, and deepening investment in Nigeria’s human capital.

Tinubu listed the programmes as comprising the Nigeria Community Action for Resilience and Economic Stimulus Additional Financing (NG-CARES); Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons and Host Communities (SOLID) initiative; and the three-pronged Human Capital Opportunity for Prosperity and Equity (HOPE) package, comprising HOPE Gov, HOPE PHC, and HOPE Edu.

According to President Tinubu, the initiative is to ‘translate recent microeconomic gains into tangible improvements in the lives of Nigerians across wards and local governments.’ The breakdown of monetary allocations shows that NG-CARES will receive about $1.25 billion ‘in additional World Bank financing’ to support smallholder farmers and small businesses, while SOLID will be backed by $300 million ‘to bridge humanitarian relief and development for internally displaced persons and their host communities.’

The President added that the $1.05 billion HOPE package would strengthen governance, primary healthcare, foundational learning, teacher support, and public education. He pointed out that the five programmes would not be handled separately but as a single integrated national strategy for poverty reduction, human capital development, and community resilience.

These intentions of the President have been expressed in very captivating statements; however, there is a crucial need to make them clearer as regards the specific things Nigerians should expect to happen in the various areas that the intervention is going to cover. The amount of money to be spent ($3.05 billion) is huge; what in concrete terms to be expected during the implementation should not be lost to the grammar in which the programme was announced and celebrated, otherwise it will be difficult to adjudge whether the initiative is succeeding or failing at every point of its implementation.

In a simple explanation, the finance minister should tell Nigerians what the ‘recent microeconomic gains’ are and how they will be translated into palpable improvement in the lives of the people. In the area of education, how will the programme make it possible for the poverty-devastated parents to be able to continue sponsoring their children’s education? Is education going to be made free at any level, or will poor parents and guardians still be selling their property or taking loans to pay school fees?

When Nigerians begin to have improved access to medicines and equipment at upgraded primary healthcare centres as planned in the intervention, will it be at no cost or at reduced cost for the poor people? How will the internally displaced persons benefit? Will they be taken back to their ancestral communities and better protected to continue with their means of livelihood, or will they remain in the camps and continue to be given bags of rice and beans while they remain unproductive?

What should be the specific expectations of the 500,000 teachers that the anti-poverty initiative is to support? In building community resilience, what should the residents expect to see happen? Answers to these questions are needed in the interest of transparency and accountability.

While not dismissing what the government has packaged, we state that tackling the cost-of-living crisis or poverty in Nigeria at this time should begin with creating and sustaining the right environment for Nigerians to use their God-given talents and energy to create wealth for themselves. Giving the people fish will not be as strong as teaching them how to fish.

We need to make Nigerians productive, and the starting point is to make the country safe for the people to be able to freely and safely thrive in their means of livelihood. The government said the $1.05 billion would be used to support smallholder farmers and small businesses. In a country being ravaged by terrorism and kidnapping, how can farmers go to farm? It should be safety first, and the money can then be used to equip farmers with inputs to produce food and make money.

The roads are not safe for traders to freely move their goods to different parts of the country, resulting in high prices of goods. There is a need for a stable power supply so that many of those who have acquired different skills, particularly those that require electricity, can practise their trade and liberate themselves from poverty. Many small businesses have closed down because of the high cost of fuel to power machines in the absence of electricity supply. Reducing poverty must involve reducing the unemployment level, which is unprecedentedly high in the country.

It is distressing that graduates cannot get jobs, and those in employment are being thrown back into the saturated labour market due to a lack of new tangible investment and the exit of some companies from the country, complaining of an unfavourable business environment. Those that are still struggling to stay afloat are shrinking operations and consequently sacking workers.

Any poverty reduction measure that does not include addressing these challenges may never make any significant impact in the lives of the millions of impoverished Nigerians. It is lamentable that 66 years after independence, Nigeria still can’t provide stable electricity that is central to becoming an industrial nation with vast opportunity to provide jobs. There has been large-scale public corruption and financial fraud at all levels of government by shameless politicians and their partners in crime in the civil service who have diverted national resources to their private ownership and are still recycling themselves as leaders of the country.

Why will Nigerians not be sceptical of any initiative to fight poverty when similar ones in the past by successive administrations can best be remembered as scams due to endemic corruption that killed them? The Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP) under President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2000, which gulped over N10 billion; the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) designed to replace PAP; the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) under President Goodluck Jonathan; and the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) under President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016 all largely failed owing to rampant corruption, poor policy design and data, as well as lack of continuity. Huge sums of money were lost to the pockets of some influential individuals.

At the unveiling of Tinubu’s anti-poverty scheme, he said: ‘This is not just a set of programmes; these are promises kept.’ We advise that the promises be truly and transparently kept to the extent that what was promised is tangibly delivered. The President must insulate the new programme from corruption and other factors that spelt doom for the previous interventions. Nigerians are watching and waiting for visible impact of the intervention.