‘Politically Motivated Mass Poverty Threatening Credibility Of 2027 Election’

Prominent pro-democracy and civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria (HURIWA) has alleged that political officeholders including the president, governors and legislators, have demonstrated deliberate and strategic decision not to implement pro-poor, pro-people and pro-growth economic policies and initiatives that would benefit majority of Nigerians because they believed that the poorer most Nigerians are, the likelihood that they could be bought over and sell their votes.

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

This was made known through a statement made available to newsmen by the national coordinator of HURIWA, Comrade Emmanuel Nnadozie Onwubiko.

“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 chests

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 said that it is certain that the government at both the centre and the federating units are focused on retaining political power by every conceivably crooked means and since millions of Nigerians who have registered as prospective voters at elections aren’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 have 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. ”

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

He said that the Nigeria Economic Outlook 2026 report, published in the first week of the New Year by PricewaterhouseCoopers (a global financial consultancy) graphically painted a picture of a nation where the clear majority of the citizens would even become the more poorer and absolutely impoverished.

The rights group said the pauperisation and impoverishment of majority of Nigerians is 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 is indeed absolutely unnerving to find out that the aforementioned expert opinion on the expansion of poverty has made a projection  that about 141 million Nigerians, roughly 62 per cent of the population, will be living in poverty by 2026.

HURIWA recalled that the report titled “Turning Macroeconomic Stability into Sustainable Growth,” paints a grim picture of deteriorating living standards as Nigeria enters the 2027 electioneering season. It said that it was also important to remind Nigerians that the World Bank has projected troubling economic challenges for millions of struggling Nigerians even as World Food Programme says Nigeria has 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 titled ‘Humanitarian aid cuts push millions deeper into hunger amid rising violence and population displacement in West and Central Africa'”, the group said.