By Mercy Peter
The current tax reforms by the government rather than laying the foundation for industrial growth are quietly repositioning Nigeria as a playground for global finance capital, deepening poverty and weakening democracy in the process.
This is the summation of Mr. Charles Okechukwu Onunaiju, a scholar and Director of the Centre for China Studies in Nigeria.
Onunaiju in an exclusive interview with NewsSpecng argued that reforms that are not grounded in Nigeria’s lived realities will only financialise the economy and not industrialise it.
In his view, Nigeria is being nudged deliberately or otherwise towards financialisation, an economic model that revolves around money circulation rather than value creation.
He said: “An economy of over 200 million people, with enormous human and material endowments, cannot survive as a financial hub.”
Financialisation, he argued, merely shifts money from one pocket to another without creating new value. Tax reforms that focus on extraction rather than production only intensify inequality and economic distortion.
He added, “Nigeria should be a new industrial frontier, not a service centre for international capital.
“You are not making progress. You are recirculating existing value, not creating new value. That is a dangerous distortion with long-term consequences.”
Drawing comparisons with China, Onunaiju highlighted how industrialisation not financial engineering lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.
“China leveraged its population, low wages, and emerging infrastructure to become the global workshop. Factories moved there, value was created, and wealth followed.”
Nigeria, he argued, should be inheriting that role as China transitions towards a knowledge- and innovation-driven economy.
“With our population and resources, Nigeria should be the next workshop of the world,” he insisted. “Instead, we are trying to become what China is trying to escape from,” he said.
Beyond economics, Onunaiju also warned that poverty poses an existential threat to Nigeria’s democracy. Poverty, he said, strips people of the luxury of rational choice, the very foundation of democratic participation.
“A poor man is a desperate man,” he said, referencing incidents such as citizens risking their lives to scoop fuel from fallen tankers. “When you don’t know where your next meal will come from, rational judgement becomes a luxury.”
Vote-buying, electoral manipulation, and political apathy, he argued, are direct consequences of widespread poverty.
“There is no greater danger to democracy than poverty,” he stressed. “Democracy is about choice, and choice requires rational judgement. Poverty takes that away.”
Handouts, he added, are not the solution. Sustainable poverty reduction lies in rural infrastructure, productive employment, and enabling people to “trade themselves out of poverty.”
He insisted: “A country like Nigeria cannot be a financial hub. That ambition is a mismatch with our reality and our destiny.
“Reforms without roots will not liberate Nigeria, they will only financialise it—and leave the real economy further behind.”
