HURIWA: Politically motivated mass poverty threatens credibility of 2027 polls in Nigeria

[Press Release] Prominent pro-democracy and civil rights advocacy group – HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) – said it had discovered that the politicians holding political offices including the President, Governors and legislators, had demonstrated deliberate and strategic decision not to implement pro-poor, pro-people and pro-growth economic policies and initiatives that would benefit the majority of Nigerians because they believed that the poorer most Nigerians were, the likelihood that they could be clearly bought over to sell their votes at cheapened rate.

Besides, HURIWA has accused the government of selective economic empowerment of cronies and friends with the agenda to mobilise funds to buy votes in the 2027 election.

It said: “The government concentrates political appointments and give lucrative contracts that are pre-paid to their political strategists and cronies in readiness for accumulating the war chess to prosecute the 2027 election which is why the National Assembly has just marked up the campaign funds’ sealing that is beyond the reach of office seekers without godfathers in the ruling class.”

HURIWA stated that it was certain that the government at both the centre and the federating units were focused on retaining political power by every conceivably crooked means and since millions of Nigerians who had registered as prospective voters at elections weren’t sophisticated and educated enough not to mortgage their consciences and exchange their votes for a few notes of the Naira at the polling boots, therefore politicians had become adept at churning out only capitalist, toxic and draconian economic programmes such as high taxation and tariffs for goods and services so as to keep the majority of the citizens impoverished and too poor to resist offers of ‘peanuts’ (few Naira notes) during elections.

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HURIWA said it was a shame that for millions of Nigerians, poverty was likely to get more acute in 2026 just few months to the 2027 election.

The Nigeria Economic Outlook 2026 report, published in the first week of the New Year by PricewaterhouseCoopers (a global financial consultancy), according to HURIWA, graphically painted a picture of a nation whereby the clear majority of the citizens would even become the much poorer and absolutely impoverished just as the Rights group said the pauperisation and impoverishment of the majority of Nigerians was a strategy by politicians to expose voters to the temptation of capitulating to the offers of bribes by political office seekers for the votes of the electorate.

HURIWA expressed consternation and asserted that it was indeed absolutely unnerving to find out that the aforementioned expert opinion on the expansion of poverty had made a projection that about 141 million Nigerians, roughly 62 per cent of the population, would be living in poverty by 2026.

HURIWA recalled that the report titled: “Turning Macroeconomic Stability into Sustainable Growth,” the report painted a grim picture of deteriorating living standards as Nigeria entered the 2027 electioneering season.

” It is also important to remind Nigerians that the World Bank has projected troubling economic challenges for millions of struggling Nigerians”, even as World foods programme said Nigeria had the highest numbers of starving children in the world.

“Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger accounts for 77 percent of the foods insecurity figures. Over 13 million children are also expected to suffer malnutrition in 2026,” according to WFP in a report published on January 16th 2026 entitled “Humanitarian aid cuts push millions deeper into hunger amid rising violence and population displacement in West and Central Africa”.

Besides, HURIWA said experts were right to assert that despite recent policy adjustments touted as steps toward economic stabilisation, the reality confronting millions of households remains far harsher. Weak real income growth, persistent inflation, and high living costs are combining to push more Nigerians below the poverty line.

PwC notes that most Nigerians are unlikely to enjoy income increases sufficient to offset rising prices in the short term.

Even if headline inflation moderates slightly, the underlying cost structure, driven by energy prices, logistics costs, and exchange rate pass-through effects, means affordability will remain elusive for the average household.

HURIWA claims that the widening scope of poverty amongst majority of Nigerians is politically motivated given that politicians have experimented with giving out financial inducement for votes in some of the off-circle and even during the 2023 general elections and the politicians have realised that due to weakened and compromised anti-graft institutions and also a highly corrupt policing institution, bribes for votes have gone on for long so those current political office holders have decided to spread poverty so as to force hungry electorate to sale their votes in 2027 poll.

HURIWA also stressed that what is called stomach infrastructure is also a foundation for buying votes. “Governors seeking either second term or wanting to go to the Senate, often provide palliatives to their heavily impoverished residents of their states so as to compromise the election. National Assembly members have also used the yearly budgets to introduce padding of budgets and provisions for constituency projects which are just ways of capturing and bribing prospective voters.

“We in HURIWA fear that the growing poverty rates amongst Nigerians and the intentional implementation of anti-poor and anti-people economic policies at both the centre and the states, are political strategies by the presidency and the governors to win the 2027 election. So the 2027 poll may lack credibility and transparency.”

COMRADE EMMANUEL NNADOZIE ONWUBIKO,
NATIONAL COORDINATOR,
HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA). January 18th, 2026.