Nigeria’s Unfulfilled Promise

Next February, Nigeria will hold its seventh election since transitioning to democracy in 1999. Nearly 100 million Nigerians are registered to vote, most of them under 25. By 2050, according to UN projections, Nigeria will be the third most populous country in the world after China and India. But despite having the world’s ninth- and tenth-largest natural gas and crude oil reserves, respectively; one of the world’s largest swaths of arable land; and a young and entrepreneurial population, Nigeria has fallen far behind peer countries such as Indonesia and South Korea when it comes to gross national income, GDP per capita, and