.The standard metrics used to measure a nation’s wealth are GDP growth, foreign exchange reserves, well-being of citizens, and the concentration of billionaires, but these variables in the Nigeria context, often paint a deceptive portrait of the reality on ground.

To the casual observer, the evidence of affluence is performative and ubiquitous: private jets at the Abuja tarmac, the sprawling mansions of Banana Island, and luxury vehicular convoys that tear through dusty streets. Yet, beneath this veneer of individual acquisition lies a stark reality: Nigeria is a poor country, and its citizens are living in a state of profound delusion.

In Nigeria, wealth is frequently conflated with access or insulation. We believe that because a man can afford a bulletproof SUV or a generator that runs for twenty-four hours, he has escaped the gravity of the nation’s systemic failure. This is the ultimate deception. No nation can truly claim to be rich when the lives of its citizens are not safe, and no individual is truly wealthy in a society where basic human needs— safety, health, and dignity are treated as high-priced luxuries.

The Nigerian “rich” live in gilded cages. They build high walls topped with electric fences and hire private security to navigate the city. However, this is not wealth; it is a desperate, expensive attempt to mitigate the effects of a collapsed state. The moment a citizen steps out of their fortified bubble, they are subject to the same broken roads, the same absence of street lighting, and the same predatory law enforcement as the man on the street.

The delusion is most dangerous regarding the concept of “safety.” Money in Nigeria does not buy systemic reliability; it only buys temporary insulation. When that insulation fails as it inevitably does many times, the millionaire finds himself in the same abyss as the pauper.

The true test of a nation’s wealth is found not in its shopping malls, but in its emergency response. This is where the “delusional” nature of Nigerian wealth is laid bare. Whether you are a laborer or a high-ranking official, a crisis in Nigeria is a “democratic” disaster; it treats everyone with the same level of neglect.

In a functional society, a high-speed accident collision triggers a choreographed sequence: paramedics, specialized tools, and a stabilized medical environment within the “Golden Hour.”

In Nigeria, the “first responders” are often untrained citizens using bare hands, while others record the carnage for social media. Money does not bring an ambulance that doesn’t exist. Fame does not bring a paramedic. This is the definition of poverty: the inability to preserve human life when seconds count.

This systemic failure is a deliberate byproduct of a governance system built on greed. Our leaders view wealth through the narrow lens of acquisition. They steal from budgets meant for fire services to fund personal estates, forgetting that fire does not respect political appointments.

When a governor’s aide is injured and must be carried on someone’s shoulder because there isn’t an ambulance on-site, it illustrates terrifying administrative incompetence. If those at the top cannot guarantee their own safety through the systems they manage, then the “rich” are indeed as vulnerable as the “church rat.”

We have allowed basic amenities to become luxuries:

* Education: By debasing public schools, the wealthy ensure their children go abroad. But they return to a country filled with a frustrated, uneducated populace and the result is a ticking time bomb no private security can stop.

* Healthcare: We have replaced “medical care” with “medical tourism.” This works until you have a heart attack at 2:00 AM. You cannot fly to London in the middle of a cardiac arrest. In that moment, billions are worth nothing without a functioning local defibrillator.

* Infrastructure: Our roads are death traps and our fire services are toothless. We watch billions in property vanish into smoke because a fire truck arrived three hours late and without water. Yet, our annual budgets run in trillions of Naira with poverty everywhere.

Perhaps the most insidious form of poverty is mental. It is found among the “influential” Nigerians who defend the status quo for the crumbs of the current system. They believe they are protected. They fail to realize that a better country is a matter of self-preservation. Every time a sycophant defends a budget that neglects healthcare, they are effectively signing their own death warrant for the day they find themselves in a local emergency. You know what, illness doesn’t discriminate – both the rich and poor are not immortally immune.

My conclusion will be more of a “Call to Reality”, and that is, regardless of our bank accounts balances, we are all poor.

We are poor because we cannot breathe clean air. We are poor because we cannot drive without fear of being robbed, kidnapped or even outrightly, killed.

We are poor because our children’s future is tied to a land where merit is dead.

We are poor because our healthcare has become a theatre of dilapidated dungeon, where prayers become the first and last hope for our recoveries.

We are poor because human capital development has been destroyed by the same leaders who benefited from functional/healthy public schools and qualitative free education.

We are poor because we have refused to ask our leaders, where are the funds gotten from fuel subsidies, taxes, loans and crude oil and gas revenues being utilised?

We are mentally poor to elect leaders who promised to domestically manage our resources prudently but now incapable. Today, Nigeria has outsourced its own revenues to another sovereign country. Yet, we remained mute, abusing ourselves in social media while our commonwealth is being filtered away.

We are poor because all the loans that the government is busy obtaining, we that never pertook to “chop or share” are going to pay compulsorily through various taxes and levies.

Soon even our poverty will be taxed, and together, we will all line up in the churches and mosques with prayer requests for God Almighty to come down and do what we should have done for ourselves.

We are poor because at every election cycle, we will sell our dignity for few cups of rice and N5,000.00, then start looking for who to blame.

We are poor because we have lost every sense of our communal bonding, where a child has the utmost privilege of being protected by a community and country.

True wealth is a collective asset. It is the peace of mind that comes from knowing that if you call for help, someone will answer.

True wealth is the security of a “safety net” that catches everyone, from the billionaire to the street hawker.

Until we stop being delusional about individual “success” and demand a functional state, we’ll remain wealthy paupers waiting for “Nigeria to happen to us.”

As you ponder on this, I want you to take a few minutes to think deeply about your “private safety net.”

If a medical emergency happened right now, do you have a reliable hospital number to call?

If the answer is no, then start a conversation with your local community association, workplace, local government, state and federal leaderships. It’s time to demand for a functional leadership with functional poverty solutions for ALL CITIZENS of Nigeria … even as I come in PEACE.

Hon. Dr. Sunny Oby Maduka (DSM)Ph.D