By Timi Olubiyi, PhD

Currently, many are passing through one of the most difficult times due to inflationary pressures. From transportation to food, electricity, healthcare, school fees, rent, and communication, the rising cost of living has altered the daily experience of millions of households. What used to be considered necessities have now become luxuries for many families. Across the country, the average citizen is under enormous pressure to survive amid worsening inflation, shrinking purchasing power, and economic uncertainty.

While inflation is a global phenomenon, the Nigerian experience has become particularly severe because of the combined effects of fuel subsidy removal, exchange rate volatility, high transportation costs, insecurity in food-producing regions, and weak wage growth. The reality of petrol selling at nearly N1,400 per litre in some parts of the country has significantly changed household economics and business sustainability. The consequences are visible everywhere in markets, offices, homes, schools, hospitals, and on the streets.

In practical terms, transportation fares have more than tripled in many cities within a short period. Food inflation has equally become alarming. Bread, eggs, cooking gas, yams, tomatoes, beans, and other staple foods continue to rise beyond the reach of average Nigerians. Electricity tariffs and telecommunications costs have also increased, while rent in urban centres keeps climbing. Unfortunately, salaries and wages have not kept pace with these realities. This is perhaps the greatest crisis confronting workers and small business owners today. Many employees still earn wages negotiated several years ago under entirely different economic conditions. Yet the value of those salaries has been severely eroded by inflation. In real terms, many workers are poorer today despite remaining employed.

The truth is that the salary structure available now can no longer effectively support decent living standards for many households. Even professionals with stable employment now struggle to meet basic obligations. Civil servants, teachers, artisans, small traders, entrepreneurs, and even middle-income earners are feeling the weight of the economic squeeze.

For many families, survival now depends on borrowing, reducing consumption, postponing healthcare, or sacrificing savings and investments. More troubling is the psychological effect of this prolonged hardship. Economic pressure is increasingly and significantly affecting mental health, marriages, productivity, and social stability.

Anxiety, frustration, depression, anger, and emotional exhaustion are becoming common experiences among citizens trying to survive difficult conditions. Difficult times and hardship often fuel marital conflicts, domestic tension, and reduced emotional well-being. In workplaces, economic uncertainty lowers morale, concentration, and productivity as employees struggle to cope with transportation costs, food, and other basic needs.

In fact, many people now live permanently in survival mode, uncertain about what tomorrow may bring. Businesses are equally under pressure. Rising operational costs continue to threaten sustainability, especially for small and medium-scale enterprises. Diesel prices, transportation costs, imported raw materials, electricity bills, taxation, and weak consumer spending have reduced profitability across many sectors. Several businesses have downsized operations, reduced staff strength, or shut down completely. Others remain in operation but merely struggle to survive.

Consequently, the era when a single salary could comfortably sustain a family is gradually disappearing in Nigeria. One of the clearest lessons from the current economic climate is that relying solely on one source of income has become increasingly risky. Economic realities now require individuals and households to think beyond traditional salary structures and embrace income diversification. In fact, multiple streams of income are no longer optional; they are becoming a necessity for financial survival and resilience. Families that depend entirely on one monthly salary are highly exposed to economic shocks, inflation, job loss, or business disruptions. The harsh reality is that even regular employment no longer guarantees financial security.

Therefore, Nigerians must begin to intentionally explore additional income opportunities that can complement existing earnings. This does not necessarily mean abandoning primary jobs or businesses, but rather creating alternative sources of income that can provide support during difficult times. Technology and digital platforms have made this more possible than ever before. Social media, e-commerce, freelancing, online consulting, digital content creation, virtual training, and remote services now offer opportunities for additional income generation.

Many professionals can monetise their knowledge, experience, or talents through side engagements without compromising their primary employment. In a way, passive income opportunities such as agriculture, cooperative investments, real estate, dividend-paying stocks, mutual funds, and small-scale trading can help cushion economic shocks over time. Land acquisition, for instance, remains one of the most reliable long-term stores of value in Nigeria despite current economic challenges. Assets that appreciate over time can provide financial protection against inflation. More so, living below one’s means may no longer be a matter of choice but a practical necessity under present realities. The culture of excessive social competition and pressure to maintain appearances despite declining income can worsen financial stress. Economic survival today requires financial honesty, discipline, and strategic planning.

In conclusion, the current economic realities in Nigeria demand a shift in mindset, financial behaviour, and survival strategies. Fuel at N1,400 per litre is not merely an energy issue; it affects transportation, food prices, school fees, healthcare costs, business operations, and overall quality of life.

Inflation has redefined daily living for millions of Nigerians. Therefore, building multiple streams of income, improving financial literacy, embracing prudent spending, and investing for the future are no longer luxury ideas but necessary responses to economic realities.

The truth is simple: depending solely on salary income in today’s Nigeria may no longer be sufficient for financial stability. The earlier households adapt to this reality, the better positioned they may be to survive and thrive despite the challenges ahead. Good luck!

How may you obtain advice or further information on the article? 

Dr Timi Olubiyi is an expert in Entrepreneurship and Business Management, holding a PhD in Business Administration from Babcock University in Nigeria. He is a prolific investment coach, author, columnist, and seasoned scholar. Additionally, he is a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (CISI) and a registered capital market operator with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He can be reached through his Twitter handle @drtimiolubiyi and via email at [email protected] for any questions, feedback, or comments. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author, Dr Timi Olubiyi, and do not necessarily reflect the views of others.

By Blaise Udunze

Nigeria’s banking industry appears to be booming, largely driven by the policies of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), under Governor Olayemi Cardoso, while the real economy continues to suffocate.

At a time when millions of Nigerians are sinking deeper into poverty, when inflation continues to erode household incomes, when businesses are collapsing under unbearable operating costs, and when migration has become a survival strategy for many young professionals, Nigerian banks are announcing staggering profits, stronger capital positions and unprecedented liquidity growth.

According to the bank’s financial statements, the financial system appears healthy. In reality, the economy where citizens work, trade and survive is gasping for breath.

This growing disconnect between financial sector prosperity and economic suffering now represents one of the gravest threats to Nigeria’s long-term economic stability and its ambition of building a $1 trillion economy.

The numbers are indeed impressive. Nigerian banks’ shareholders’ funds reportedly surged to about N27 trillion following the recapitalisation exercise. The top five banks now command balance sheets estimated at over N164 trillion. Tier-1 banks collectively generated trillions in profits within the first quarter of 2026 alone, while the sector-wide recapitalisation exercise raised over N4.56 trillion.

Ordinarily, such figures should inspire confidence about the future of the economy. Stronger banks are expected to translate into stronger businesses, more jobs, industrial expansion and wider economic opportunities. But Nigeria’s experience is proving otherwise.

Instead of serving as engines of productive growth, banks are increasingly becoming custodians of liquidity trapped within the financial system itself. That is the real danger.

Even as banking liquidity expands sharply, lending to the productive economy remains weak and constrained. Reports indicate that banks parked a record N24.13 trillion with the CBN, while simultaneously increasing investments in government securities and treasury bills because these avenues are safer, more profitable and less risky than lending to businesses operating within Nigeria’s harsh economic climate. This reality exposes a dangerous contradiction.

A developing economy desperately in need of industrialisation, manufacturing growth, infrastructure expansion and job creation cannot afford a banking system that prefers financial safety over productive economic risk.

A sustainable economy cannot thrive where the real sector is starved of funds. Yet this is exactly where Nigeria now stands.

Despite the massive liquidity in the banking system, growth in lending to the private sector continues to lag behind the pace of liquidity expansion. The implication is clear. Financial sector strength is no longer translating into real economic development. This is not how healthy economies function.

Ordinarily, banks in developing economies are expected to operate as catalysts for economic transformation. Across successful economies, commercial banks finance manufacturing, agriculture, innovation, infrastructure and entrepreneurship because those sectors generate jobs, productivity and national wealth.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), especially, are globally recognised as the backbone of grassroots economic development. Nigeria is no exception.

SMEs account for over 70 per cent of registered businesses, contribute nearly half of Nigeria’s GDP and generate between 84 and 90 per cent of employment opportunities. Yet despite their overwhelming importance, SMEs reportedly receive barely between 0.5 per cent and one per cent of total commercial bank lending. That is not merely a policy failure. It is an economic tragedy.

Every denied SME loan is a denied employment opportunity. Every failed business represents another frustrated entrepreneur. Every frustrated entrepreneur becomes another Nigerian contemplating migration.

This is how economic dysfunction transforms into human displacement. The so-called “Japa” phenomenon did not emerge in isolation. It is deeply connected to economic hopelessness. When productive citizens lose faith in their country’s economic future, migration stops being a lifestyle choice and becomes a survival mechanism.

Unbeknownst to the policymakers is that Nigeria cannot realistically build a $1 trillion economy while productive sectors remain financially suffocated.

A closer glance at the trend of events helps to reveal that the danger becomes even more severe when viewed against the backdrop of the recent outcome of the 305^th Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting, where the CBN retained the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) at 26.5 per cent in its bid to sustain disinflation and macroeconomic stability.

It is understandable and certain that inflation control is important, but the fact is that at 15.69 per cent, inflation remains painfully high and continues to weaken purchasing power. Food prices remain elevated. Transportation costs remain unbearable. Consumer demand is weakening. The middle class is shrinking rapidly.

But maintaining elevated interest rates also comes with painful consequences. Simple arithmetic tells us that higher interest rates mean higher lending costs. Higher lending costs mean higher production costs. Higher production costs worsen inflationary pressures and weaken business survival rates.

Invariably, this also tells us that for Nigerian manufacturers and corporates already battling a weak naira, volatile exchange rates, expensive diesel, energy insecurity and declining consumer demand, access to affordable credit is becoming almost impossible.

Many businesses are no longer borrowing to expand production or employ workers. They are borrowing merely to survive. This is economic suffocation.

Meanwhile, banks continue to profit massively from high-yield government securities and treasury investments. Reports indicate that major Nigerian banks generated over N6.68 trillion from investment securities and treasury bills instead of financing productive enterprises capable of stimulating growth and employment.

The government’s appetite for borrowing itself shows no sign of slowing down. Public borrowing reportedly climbed above N39 trillion. Historically, excessive government borrowing crowds out private sector investment because banks naturally prefer lending to the government rather than exposing themselves to risks associated with businesses operating in unstable economic conditions.

The result is predictable. The real sector weakens while speculative and non-productive financial activities flourish. This explains why Nigeria increasingly resembles a financial system disconnected from the realities of ordinary citizens.

While banks celebrate rising profits, poverty and hunger worsen visibly across the country. Unemployment continues to rise. Small businesses are dying quietly. Household purchasing power is collapsing under inflationary pressure.

Yet the financial system appears more liquid than ever. That contradiction should alarm policymakers. The recapitalisation exercise itself now raises difficult questions.

What exactly is the purpose of stronger banks if stronger banks do not strengthen national productivity?

If recapitalisation merely empowers banks to deepen investments in government debt instruments while manufacturers, farmers, exporters and SMEs remain starved of affordable credit, then the exercise risks becoming financially impressive but economically hollow.

Indeed, the current monetary environment appears to reward financial conservatism over productive risk-taking.

The stringent Cash Reserve Requirement (CRR), elevated interest rates and broader macroeconomic uncertainty continue to discourage aggressive lending to the private sector. Banks understandably seek safety. But nations do not industrialise through excessive financial caution.

No economy develops when capital circulates primarily within treasury bills and government securities instead of flowing into factories, farms, logistics, housing, innovation and production.

This is the larger danger confronting Nigeria today. Economic crises rarely begin with recession statistics alone. Sometimes, they begin when financial institutions become detached from the suffering realities of the wider economy. They begin when growth exists only within banking balance sheets but disappears from households, factories and streets.

Without productive credit expansion, economic growth becomes artificial and exclusionary. Without affordable financing, businesses cannot scale. Without business expansion, jobs cannot emerge. Also, it must be noted that without jobs, insecurity, poverty and migration inevitably worsen. The implications for social stability are enormous.

One painful fact is that citizens already burdened by inflation, debt pressures and widespread distrust now face a system where economic opportunities continue shrinking despite apparent financial sector prosperity. One of the lurking dangers is that this deepens resentment, weakens confidence in institutions and threatens long-term economic cohesion.

The CBN’s inflation fight may be necessary, but monetary stability alone cannot substitute for productive economic expansion. Financial stability without inclusive growth eventually becomes unsustainable.

The real economy matters more than banking optics. Nigeria urgently needs policies that incentivise real sector lending, reduce structural risks facing manufacturers and SMEs, strengthen credit infrastructure, lower production bottlenecks and redirect liquidity toward productive economic activity.

As a matter of fact, it is high time for Nigeria to start rethinking the growing dependence on debt-driven fiscal management that continues to crowd out private investment. Development cannot occur when government borrowing consumes the financial oxygen needed by businesses.

Ultimately, banking profitability should not become an isolated island of prosperity surrounded by a collapsing productive economy.

A nation cannot celebrate trillion-naira banking profits while millions of citizens sink deeper into economic despair. No society sustains such a contradiction indefinitely.

If Nigeria truly hopes to build a resilient and inclusive economy, then the banking sector must once again become a vehicle for national development rather than merely a beneficiary of government debt and monetary tightening.

Otherwise, the country risks creating a contradictory economy where banks grow richer while citizens grow poorer and where financial prosperity exists only on paper while economic hardship defines everyday life.

Blaise, a journalist and PR professional, writes from Lagos and can be reached via: [email protected]

By Kehinde Ogundare

Africa has always found its own way around barriers. When fixed-line banking proved too slow and too exclusionary, Kenya did not wait for the infrastructure to catch up. It built M-Pesa instead, a mobile payments platform that by 2022 had 50 million customers across seven African countries and processed nearly 20 billion individual transactions annually.

That story is now so well-worn that it risks becoming a cliché. But it contains a genuinely instructive logic: constrained circumstances, properly understood, can become a design brief.

Today, Africa faces a new set of constraints, around software development capacity, technical talent, and the cost of building digital tools, which demands exactly the same creative leap. Meeting these challenges will require the same kind of practical innovation that previously reshaped financial inclusion across the continent.

The numbers make the challenge plain. Africa’s internet economy was projected to contribute $180 billion, or 5.2% of aggregate GDP, by 2025. Meanwhile, cloud adoption is expanding at 25 to 30% annually, outpacing Europe and North America, while thousands of African companies are already experimenting with AI-enabled operations. Yet, the human infrastructure required to sustain this momentum is not keeping pace.

Unless the continent finds smarter and more scalable ways to build digital systems, Africa risks becoming the world’s largest consumer of a digital future it did not help design.

The build gap is structural, not incidental

Africa’s AI challenge is not a lack of ambition or demand, but the widening gap between the pace of technological change and the availability of skills needed to support it. Across the continent, organisations are under growing pressure to build AI capability quickly, as shortages in specialised talent increasingly affect innovation, competitiveness, and the ability to fully participate in the global digital economy.

A 2024 ICT Skills Survey found that more than 28,000 high-end developer and cybersecurity roles in South Africa had to be outsourced because local talent was simply unavailable, with enterprises poaching the same scarce professionals from one another in a cycle that drives up costs and squeezes out the SMEs that form the backbone of most African economies. Nigeria and Kenya, despite recording developer population growth of 28% and 33% respectively between 2023 and 2024, still represent only a fraction of the global developer community.

The challenge is further intensified by the continued loss of skilled talent to more developed markets, limiting the continent’s ability to build and retain the expertise needed for long-term digital growth. However, this is not simply a pipeline issue that can be solved through education alone. It reflects deeper structural constraints, from uneven investment in technical infrastructure and digital training to the high cost of reliable connectivity and power instability. Across African markets, many businesses and communities are still forced to operate within systems that make full participation in the digital economy significantly harder. These are not isolated operational challenges. They are systemic barriers that risk slowing Africa’s ability to fully realise the opportunities of the AI era.

Intelligent tools as strategic infrastructure

This is precisely why the emergence of AI-assisted low-code and vibe coding approaches represents something more than a developer trend. It represents a potential structural response to a structural challenge.

Vibe coding, a term popularised by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy in 2025, refers to building functional applications through natural language descriptions rather than conventional code. You describe what you want; the system generates the structure, logic, and connections required to make it work.

For the continent’s millions of entrepreneurs operating without a developer on staff, this creates a genuine shortcut to working software, whether it is a South African small business looking to digitise operations, a Kenyan agritech startup building supply chain tools, or a Nigerian SME trying to automate customer approvals and customer service workflows.

Consider a small logistics company trying to manage deliveries across multiple regions without the resources to hire a full development team. AI-assisted low-code tools can help build routing dashboards, automate customer notifications, and digitise inventory tracking in days rather than months.

AI-assisted low-code development goes further still, bringing machine learning, predictive analytics, and self-learning algorithms into the development process, making it suitable not merely for quick prototypes but for the scalable, data-intensive applications that banking, healthcare, and logistics at a continental scale genuinely require.

Recent research found that Kenya’s approach to digital adoption, characterised by grassroots digital literacy programmes and simplified onboarding, demonstrates that informality need not be a barrier to digital innovation. That finding points toward something important: the tools that matter most in Africa are not necessarily the most sophisticated ones. They are the ones who meet builders where they actually are. A fast-moving startup operating out of a co-working space in Lagos’s Yabacon Valley has different needs from an established financial services firm in Cape Town navigating compliance requirements, and both have different needs from the first-time builder in a smaller city with no developer network at all.

What connects all three contexts is the principle that lowering the cost and complexity of building software expands who gets to shape Africa’s digital future. Africa requires massive scaling of its digital workforce, with reports indicating that 650 million training opportunities will be needed to meet the demand for digital skills across the continent by 2030. Traditional pipelines cannot close that gap at the required speed. Tools that extend the productive capacity of existing builders and draw non-technical entrepreneurs into the act of building are critical.

Leapfrogging requires foundations, not just shortcuts

The risk, and it is a real one, is mistaking these tools for a substitute for the deeper investments Africa still needs to make. As analysts have argued, mobile money dramatically increased financial inclusion but did not replace the need for a stable, well-regulated banking sector, a tension that Nigeria’s rapidly maturing fintech ecosystem is navigating in real time as it moves beyond its breakout years.

The same logic applies here. Vibe coding and AI-assisted development cannot paper over the infrastructure deficits that still constrain the continent. Across many parts of Africa, inconsistent access to reliable electricity and high-quality connectivity continues to shape who can fully participate in the digital economy. While AI-powered tools may lower technical barriers to innovation, their impact will ultimately depend on broader progress in digital infrastructure, energy reliability, and equitable access to technology and stronger governance frameworks around cybersecurity and data sovereignty.

McKinsey has observed that Africa has a proven track record of leapfrogging traditional development pathways, from mobile payments to cloud adoption, often outpacing what established markets achieved through slower, incremental routes.

What Africa needs, then, is not a choice between vibe coding and AI-assisted development, nor between either of those and conventional software engineering. It needs an intelligent layering of all three: accessible, prompt-driven tools for the entrepreneurs and administrators who need working solutions now; robust AI-assisted platforms for the developers and institutions building systems that must scale across borders and regulatory environments; and sustained investment in producing and retaining the senior technical talent that no tool, however intelligent, can fully substitute.

Africa’s AI market will be worth $16.5 billion by 2030. Whether African organisations are building that future or merely consuming it will depend on whether the means to build it are genuinely within reach, across the continent’s established tech hubs and deep into the cities and towns that sit beyond them.

Kehinde Ogundare is the Country Head of Zoho Nigeria