THE STATE AND HUMAN SECURITY FAILURES: INTERROGATING THE ROOTS OF POVERTY IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and one of its largest economies, presents a troubling paradox: a state richly endowed with human and natural resources where more than half the population lives in poverty. This paper interrogates the relationship between state failure, human security, and poverty in Nigeria, arguing that the persistence of mass poverty is not simply an economic accident but a direct consequence of the Nigerian state’s chronic failure to guarantee the seven dimensions of human security identified by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP): economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political security. Drawing on state failure theory and the human security paradigm, and relying on secondary data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the World Bank, the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, and a broad range of scholarly literature, the paper demonstrates how weak institutions, corruption, elite predation, insurgency, banditry, and the erosion of the social contract have combined to entrench poverty across the country. The paper further shows that poverty and insecurity operate in a mutually reinforcing cycle in which deprivation breeds violence and violence deepens deprivation. At the same time, the Nigerian state’s response has remained heavily militarised and inattentive to the structural, human-centred roots of insecurity. The paper concludes that reversing Nigeria’s poverty crisis requires a fundamental reorientation of statecraft away from regime security towards genuine human security, anchored in institutional reform, inclusive governance, economic diversification, and accountable leadership.