Christopher Imumolen, presidential candidate of the Accord Party in the 2023 election, says Nigeria is living under a self-imposed oil curse that has fuelled poverty, corruption, and institutional decay.
Imumolen traced the country’s economic stagnation to decades of rent-seeking, extreme centralisation, and neglect of productive sectors since the 1970 oil boom.
He spoke in Abuja on Thursday at the 2025 Political Economy and Leadership Summit with the theme “Political Economy of Nation Building: The World’s Unfinished Business”.
The summit was organised by the International Institute of Experts on Political Economy and Administration (IIEPEA) Canada, in collaboration with the United World Congress of Diplomats (UN-WCD).
Imumolen said the 1986 Structural Adjustment Programme was a missed opportunity that liberalised trade at a huge social cost, collapsed public services, and failed to break Nigeria’s oil addiction.
He added that successive governments continued to mismanage oil wealth through subsidies, multiple exchange rate regimes, and unsustainable debts.
His words: “Oil still accounts for over 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings and about 50 percent of government revenue.
“The economy remains highly vulnerable to global oil prices. The resource cost, we call it resources curse, as oil itself is a blessing or a curse.
“God has provided us with so many resources, yet as a nation, we likely could survive on the same resources we have. Massive wealth exists alongside extreme poverty in the same country.
Nigeria has one of the highest rates of income inequalities and vied with India for the title of world poverty capital.”
The Accord Party chieftain said political power in Nigeria is often sought as a means to control oil revenues and sustain patronage networks.
He lamented that despite decades of oil earnings, Nigeria still suffers from critical deficits in power, roads, railways, and refineries.
Imumolen noted that the economy has experienced low growth, recession, and rising inflation, which reached over 33 percent last year, while debt servicing continues to consume much of the country’s revenue.
He acknowledged that the current administration has introduced bold reforms such as petrol subsidy removal and the unification of foreign exchange windows.
He, however, said the measures have triggered sharp increases in the cost of living, causing widespread public anguish.
Imumolen warned that unless Nigeria makes a radical shift from an extractive economy to a productive one, its future will remain constrained by the same resources meant to bless it.
“We must build strong institutions that enforce the rule of law, protect property rights, and prioritise agriculture, manufacturing and technology over rent-seeking,” he said.
