Futility of building $1 trillion GDP on hustle economy By Guardian Editorial Board on February 24, 2026: Recommended Nigerian Newspaper Report 30

Futility of building $1 trillion GDP on hustle economy By Guardian Editorial Board on February 24, 2026: Recommended Nigerian Newspaper Report 30

The failure of successive Nigerian governments to add value to the country’s numerous primary products before exporting them constitutes not just a lazy option, but a major impediment to the government’s desire for a mega-economy.

From a once self-sustaining economy in the early years of its independence, Nigeria has regressed to an import-dependent country. And as the country continues its descent, it has also lost its ability to produce the needed raw materials to sustain the few local manufacturers that are still in operation, forcing the remnants of the industrial ruin to depend on foreign countries, especially China, for as much as 70 to 90 per cent of their inputs.

From commodities to solid minerals and agriculture, the tragedy of the cause and effect of broken value chains stares the country in the face. To build a sustainable economy and create decent jobs, an economy needs to develop critical value chains in every industry. However, Nigeria has opted for the easy option of exporting its resources and neglecting value addition, which is necessary to create jobs. Sadly, this is not an accident but a policy choice.

The fact that successive administrations, since the return to democratic rule in 1999, have failed to reverse this unfortunate trend, but only decided to leverage it to create political patronage in the guise of loyalists, is even more tragic. This crisis is a test case of the many social satires that are currently re-shaping Nigeria’s economic path.

On the bright side, the country has recorded a few wins – a few successful local business brands, a fast-growing technology sector and a flourishing financial sector. However, with several million Nigerians either unemployed or underemployed, these seemingly impressive achievements are not what the country should boast of, but rather a foundation to consolidate and build upon. Alongside a political class that is brazenly disconnected from the ordinary people, the big business emperors and superrich have left the impoverished and sometimes socially-abused Nigerians behind, thus widening the economic inequality gap.

It is no surprise that most Nigerians are on a twin-track race – one extremely ignoble and the other merely reinforcing the entrenched trap of underdevelopment. The individuals in the first category (who are mostly youth) have taken to career crimes – Internet fraud, kidnapping and sundry – while the second group are neck deep in the ‘hustle economy’, an ecosystem some mischievous government officials often dress up as a sign of the undying entrepreneurial spirit of the country.

Entrepreneurship, of course, is the mother of innovation and economic prosperity, but there is nothing dignifying about the choice of a first-class graduate of engineering to hawk phone accessories just to earn a living. It is neither an entrepreneurship, in its noble sense, but a desperate attempt by an adult to wean himself from the burden of relying on relations for daily bread, but also constrained by a sense of mortality in the choice of where to eke out a living.

Today, honest work does not guarantee a livelihood. As formal jobs evaporate under the weight of sluggish growth, policy uncertainty and a shrinking private sector, millions of citizens are retreating into survival businesses – petty trading, informal services and micro-enterprises created not out of innovation, but from desperation.

This is no longer entrepreneurship but economic self-defence that is ensnaring millions of young people in a poverty trap. Young people in their 20s and 30s who waste hours daily hawking just to afford the next meal are not a future human capital of any economy, but a national debt to the economy.

University graduates sell bottled water and snakes on the street, trained accountants and engineers ride commercial motorcycles to survive, while families assign young people who should be in universities or learning members into micro-trading just to make ends meet from parents who are also trapped in subsistence syndrome. Every year, thousands of young school leavers enlist in the same ‘hustles’, entrenching the crisis. This is not the kind of trend a serious country should encourage or allow to continue.

The informal sector cannot continue to account for 80 per cent of employment, not when it pays a pittance and impoverishes the supposed future leaders. The informal sector’s dominance of the labour market is not a mark of productivity, but a manifestation of a failed formal economy. If this does not bother the government, it should be worried that the fate of the largest number of its working class is decided by the country’s most vulnerable and least paying sector.

The country cannot build its roadmap for a $1 trillion gross domestic product (GDP) on this contradiction, much as it cannot surrender the future of its most critical population to a survival economy. To pivot from this trend, the country does not need another promise or paper policy but action plans that have the prospects of increasing the performance of the formal sector, incentivising formal job creation and encouraging youths with innovative ideas and service offerings to scale. On this basis, the executive bill that seeks to stop the wholesale export of commodities without any value addition is most instructive. The country cannot afford to wait endlessly for the passage of the bills and their implementation.

But legislation alone will not change a crisis that was created by poor economic incentives, failed infrastructure and unrestrained importation of foreign goods. There is no better time than a marshal plan to overhaul the local economy than now. A mere document or policy statement cannot replace such a plan. Government at all levels must demonstrate the political will to work together to address rigidities that have stalled job creation, while the Federal Government provides direction, knowing that economic empowerment is the first line of national security.

A survival economy breeds job insecurity, stagnation and poverty. These are not social ills any country should normalise. When citizens are trapped in subsistence activities, the economy loses innovation, the tax base shrinks, and the equality gap widens. A country without a coherent social safety programme, like Nigeria, cannot afford the ills of an economy dominated by hustle businesses.

At the heart of this crisis is the absence of a clear national job strategy. This is the time to refit reforms to increase the labour-absorbing capacity of the economy. To start, the government should declare mass job creation an emergency. In doing this, energy, logistics, infrastructure and other areas with entrenched constraints that have limited the growth of the private sector should be put on the table.

Nigeria must confront the uncomfortable truth – a nation of over 200 million people cannot be sustained by hustle. Dignity of work demands more than a political promise. It also requires that a structure be built, that opportunities be created, and that protection be given to those who toil to earn a living and build the nation.

Research Credits

*This compilation series was first researched, written, poster designed and last updated by Toju Micheal Ogbe.