A response to the Federal Ministry of Finance Public Consultation on the Nigeria Economic Policy Framework.
The Federal Ministry of Finance has published the Nigeria Economic Policy Framework as a Public Consultation Document, with a summary Consultation Deck, and has invited every Nigerian to comment before 27 November 2026. We welcome both the document and the decision to consult. A framework that is meant to outlive any administration has to begin with the people it will govern, and this one does.
Eight strengths we would keep. Hover over or tap any card for the detail.
Nigeria has had many economic plans but no enduring rule for how decisions are made and how success is judged. The draft says so plainly.
Plans, the MTEF and budgets decide what to do and when; the Framework decides how decisions are made. That distinction is sound and long overdue.
The six conditions for government intervention (market failure, comparative advantage, additionality, measurable outcome, time limit, exit mechanism) and the Policy Impact Statement would, if applied, end most ad hoc policy.
The chain from population through health, education, skills, employment, productivity and earnings to savings and wealth is the right way to see human capital.
Every major programme must show its economic rationale, financing, ownership, tariff, maintenance and return.
Departures need a trigger, a time limit, a disclosed cost and a published path back.
Three tiers of dashboards and a one-page National Economic Scorecard every Independence Day.
The "is and is not" table and the deck make the proposal readable by any citizen, which is itself an act of accountability.
Three assumptions beneath the draft. Each has its own chapter.
which hides the issues the Framework most needs to see.
that every community, firm and person can read for themselves, which the Sustainability Inequality Expression (SIE) provides.
that the Federal Government can, on its own, sustain a vision beyond those presently in office or in power, can see the whole economy from where it sits, and is the right institution to shepherd it.
Chapter 5 sets out a simpler model that answers all three. Appendix A answers the seventeen consultation questions, and Appendix B introduces Ahia.
GDP is the backbone of the draft. Seven of its measures of success depend on it, in the draft's own words below.
If GDP is blind to something, all seven are blind to it at once. If GDP is revised, all seven move with it.
Largest economy in Africa and among the top 20 globally
GDP growth consistently faster than population growth
Tax-to-GDP of at least 20% and revenue-to-GDP of at least 30%
Does this initiative raise total investment as a share of GDP?
Real GDP; GDP per capita
GDP per worker / per hour
Revenue/GDP; deficit/GDP
When Nigeria rebased its GDP in 2014, the economy grew by close to 90 per cent overnight and became the largest in Africa. Not one household was richer for it.
Nigerian workers are in informal employment, by the NBS's own labour force survey. Their output enters GDP through estimates and samples, not records.
GDP adds up the market value of what is produced in a period. Here is what it cannot see.
Generators and private guards are added as growth.
When the grid fails and every shop runs a generator, the diesel and the generators are added to GDP. When a community pays private guards because the street is unsafe, the guards are added to GDP. The cost of a failure is recorded as growth.
Rotted harvests, idle land and idle graduates never appear.
Harvests that rot between farm and market, shops that close early because of insecurity, land left unworked, trained people without work and buildings standing empty never appear in GDP. They are the largest costs in the Nigerian economy and the measure is blind to them.
The total can rise while most households fall.
GDP can grow while most households grow poorer, because it records the total and not its distribution.
More than nine in ten workers are informal.
By the National Bureau of Statistics' own labour force survey, more than nine in ten Nigerian workers are in informal employment. Their output enters GDP through estimates and samples, not records.
A statistical revision can deliver an outcome no citizen feels.
When Nigeria rebased its GDP in 2014, the economy grew by close to 90 per cent overnight and became the largest in Africa. Not one household was richer for it. A further rebasing in 2025 raised the figure again. An outcome that a statistical revision can achieve is not an outcome a citizen can feel.
Waste, idleness and distribution: exactly where Nigeria loses most of its wealth.
The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income.Simon Kuznets, who built the first national income accounts, to the United States Congress, 1934
The warning was not heeded then and it has not been heeded since.
GDP was not designed to tell a community whether it is sustainable. It was designed to tell a central authority how much the economy beneath it could yield.
Governments needed to know how much output they could tax and borrow against.
And how much they could direct to war production.
It became the language of international finance: lenders, rating agencies and multilaterals size a nation, rank it and decide what it can borrow.
How large is the pie that the centre can draw on?
That origin explains its shape. GDP is a measure for those who control resources. It rests on the view, central to conventional economics, that resources are scarce and must be controlled and allocated from the top.
A nation that steers its domestic economy by GDP steers by the view from the top, and the view from the top cannot see waste, idleness or distribution, which are exactly where Nigeria loses most of its wealth.
Production (p): the goods and services a person, firm or community makes or renders.
Distribution (d): what of that production moves to where it is needed: sold, delivered, shared or traded.
Consumption (c): what is actually used.
Waste (w): what is lost, spoiled, idle or destroyed: rotted harvests, unsold stock, idle hours, empty rooms and halls, unused skills, stolen goods.
The view beneath GDP: resources are scarce things to be controlled and hidden.
The SIE starts from a different view of resources from the one beneath GDP. Resources are not best seen as scarce things to be controlled and hidden. They are best seen as having inherent interactive properties: they create more when they are exposed and put to work. Control leads to hoarding and idleness; stewardship leads to use. The SIE is the measure of stewardship.
The same four numbers, at every level.
GDP means nothing to a market women's association; the SIE does.
The same four numbers apply to a household, a shop, a farm, a school, a market, a community, a Local Government Area, a State and the Federation. Each can read its own SIE and act on it.
A named term, measured directly.
Waste is a named term, measured directly, not a cost hidden inside growth. A generator bill, a rotted harvest and an idle graduate all show up as what they are.
Producing much but distributing little is visibly failing.
A community that produces much but distributes little is visibly failing, however large its output.
GDP rewards being bigger. The SIE rewards being sustainable.
A nation can chase size and still collapse; a nation that holds p > d > c > w everywhere cannot.
From the ground up, in real time. No rebasing can change it.
When organisations and communities record what they produce, distribute, consume and waste as they work, the measure comes from the ground up, in real time, and no rebasing can change it.
A community whose waste is rising knows where to look.
A community whose waste is rising knows where to look. A national figure tells it nothing.
We do not propose abolishing GDP. We propose that each measure does the job it was built for.
What one Federal Executive Council approves, the next can withdraw.
A plan lives in the people who wrote it and the offices that champion it. When they leave, the plan is quietly set aside, and the next administration writes its own. The draft recognises the problem and proposes remedies: approval by the Federal Executive Council, endorsement by the National Economic Council, induction of political office holders, the Framework appended to letters of appointment, compliance reviews and a review every ten years. Every one of these remedies is held by the same offices whose turnover causes the problem. What one Federal Executive Council approves, the next can withdraw. A framework becomes durable only when it is held by people who do not leave office every four years.
Government sees the other nine-tenths through samples, reported months later and revised years after.
Government at every tier, with all its staff, is at most a tenth of the Nigerian population. The other nine-tenths produce, trade, farm, build, teach, transport and consume, most of them in informal work. Government sees them through periodic surveys and samples, reported months later and revised years after that. No ministry, however capable, can see from Abuja which market in which LGA lost its produce to bad roads this week, which street's shops closed early because of insecurity, or which trained young people have no work. The draft's three tiers of dashboards are all owned by government and fed by government; they inherit government's blind spots.
An economy is shepherded by those who run it every day.
The draft's own second principle names private enterprise as "the principal engine of production and employment", yet its governance table (Section 7) lists nine sets of owners and every one is a government institution. The people who actually produce, distribute and consume have no defined role in the Framework that is meant to govern their work. An economy is shepherded by those who run it every day. Government's role is to approve, commission, protect and provide the strategic infrastructure the economy's own data shows it needs.
When everything is a priority, nothing is.
Agriculture, manufacturing, energy, mining, digital, finance, creative industries, tourism, transport, housing, logistics, healthcare and education are all priorities. When everything is a priority, nothing is. Priorities should be revealed by where waste is greatest, region by region, not declared in advance.
The largest single source of waste in many communities.
It keeps farms unworked, shops shut early and roads empty, and it is the largest single source of waste in many communities. The draft does not treat it as an economic bottleneck.
Who checks the scorecard is left open.
The scorecard is compiled, owned and published by government. The draft leaves open who verifies it.
Quarterly and annual reports describe an economy that has moved on.
A quarterly scorecard and an annual report describe an economy that has already moved on.
Our model is to use economic administration platforms, such as ahiaapp.com and others that may arise, to drive the economy at every level, in every State and every community, so that what it produces exceeds what it distributes, what it distributes exceeds what it consumes, and what it consumes exceeds what it wastes.
Security, health, skills and knowledge, so that every person is productive.
Productivity is measured by the efficiency of the communities and businesses they operate in.
Every community, every State, the nation.
Recorded by every organisation and community, and read at every level.
Three blocks and the flows between them. Follow the flow step by step, or hover over or tap any item for the detail.
Organisations and communities produce, distribute and consume; platforms carry their records and reports; government approves, commissions and builds where the data points; the media watch every entity.
Businesses, cooperatives, associations, schools, markets, farms and communities carry on their work and record it as they go.
Reporting is not a separate return filed once a year; it is a by-product of running the business on an accredited platform: a sale, a delivery, a stock count, a shift worked, a spoiled batch.
News agencies and the media watch every entity in the system, government, platforms, monitors, agencies and the NBS, and report on how each performs its role.
Platforms give organisations and communities the tools to run their operations, find customers, staff and suppliers, put idle assets to work and keep their records.
Through the platforms, organisations and communities produce, distribute, consume and control waste: they find customers, staff and suppliers, and put idle assets to work.
In every community, independent individuals are recruited and funded to report the real economic impact of activity on the society around them: what is working, what is idle, what is lost. They are independent of the businesses they observe and of government, and their reports are what make the SIE more than self-declaration.
The platforms' tip and report mechanisms carry specific reports of crime, evasion or legal breach to the agency each concerns.
No single platform holds the system: any provider that meets the open standard may be accredited, so competition keeps platforms honest and no administration can capture the system by capturing one company.
Government does not run the system. It approves the Framework, commissions the SIE reporting standard, accredits the platforms that meet it and protects the rules.
The Federal Government commissions an open SIE reporting standard with the NBS, and publishes accreditation rules for platforms and monitors.
The NBS accesses non-private, aggregated data to report the actual impact of the SIE on the GDP, which gives Nigeria a more accurate GDP for international use, built on records rather than estimates.
The Police, the Federal Inland Revenue Service, the National Pension Commission and other agencies are connected to the platforms' tip and report mechanisms. They act on specific reports of crime, evasion or legal breach that reach them through those channels. They do not get open access to private records; they get the reports that concern them.
Its spending role is the strategic infrastructure (power, roads, ports, security, connectivity) that the statistics of business activity show is holding production, distribution or consumption back. The data, not the political calendar, decides where infrastructure goes.
The key is ownership. The people of Nigeria are the employees and operators of the businesses, and those businesses run within the Framework every day.
The cycle follows Plan, Execute, Review, Sustain (PERS).
Yes. Nigeria has had many plans and no enduring rule for how decisions are made and how success is judged. But a framework is standing only if it is held by people who do not leave office. A framework approved by one Federal Executive Council can be withdrawn by the next. We recommend that the Framework be anchored in the daily activity of organisations and communities, who record what they produce, distribute, consume and waste on accredited platforms. Government approves and commissions it; the economy holds it (Sections 4.1 and 5.3).
It describes the right destination but omits the condition that keeps a nation there. We would add sustainability, measured where people live: "A productive, competitive, diversified and inclusive economy that creates quality jobs, raises real incomes, expands opportunity, improves living standards and delivers shared, sustainable prosperity, in which every community produces more than it distributes, distributes more than it consumes and consumes more than it wastes."
They are sound for international comparison, but two changes are needed. First, add the SIE (p > d > c > w in every community, with waste falling year on year) as the first outcome for domestic policy. Waste and idle resources are Nigeria's largest losses and none of the ten outcomes measures them. Second, move economic size (Outcome 1) to an international annex. Size is a by-product of sustainable activity, not an outcome in itself, and a statistical rebasing can achieve it without any Nigerian being better off. Vision 20:2020 set the same top-20 goal and missed it.
Unemployment below 5 per cent can be met on paper while most workers remain underemployed, because more than nine in ten work informally and an hour of work counts as employment. We recommend measuring idle labour directly, as waste of skills and hours. Tax-to-GDP of 20 per cent depends on a denominator that changes with each rebasing, and it is unrealistic while most activity is unrecorded. It becomes realistic when the economy is visible: when businesses record their activity on accredited platforms because it brings them customers, credit and protection, formalisation happens by participation rather than enforcement.
We agree with most of them. We propose three changes:
The relationships are clear. The exception clauses are good on paper, but the trigger is declared by the same executive that wants to depart. We recommend that every exception be published with the data that shows its trigger, verified independently by the NBS and open to media scrutiny, and that it lapse automatically at its time limit unless renewed in public.
The sixteen areas are complete, and the seven systems are a useful way to analyse policy. We recommend adding the four flows (production, distribution, consumption, waste) as a lens across all seven: each system should report what it produces, distributes, consumes and wastes. Security should be added explicitly under Productivity, because insecurity is among the largest causes of idle land, closed shops and empty roads.
We would prioritise a commodity-windfall rule that saves revenue above a published benchmark price, and debt rules measured against revenue (debt service to revenue) rather than GDP, because revenue is cash and GDP can be revised. Coordination would be strengthened by a shared, live data base: when the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance read the same aggregated SIE data on prices, distribution and activity, disputes over data and assumptions fall away while the mandates stay distinct and the Central Bank's independence is untouched.
The scope is right. The 6.2 test is sound. We would replace the 6.3 test ("does it raise investment as a share of GDP") with: "Does this initiative raise production relative to consumption, or reduce waste, in the places it reaches, as measured by reported activity?" We would add the use of idle assets (land, buildings, equipment and stock) to 6.2, since putting what already exists to work is the cheapest investment a nation can make.
The six conditions are excellent. We would add a seventh: reporting. Beneficiaries of every intervention record their activity on an accredited platform, so that additionality and the measurable outcome are shown by records, not claimed in reports. Thirteen priority sectors is too many. We recommend that priorities be revealed region by region by where the SIE shows waste is greatest, and that security be treated as a condition for every sector.
Add a waste check at every link of the chain from population to wealth: a trained person without work is wasted skill, a school place unfilled is wasted capacity. Skills should be recorded on the person's own verifiable digital identity, so employers can trust them. Infrastructure should be directed "based on the statistics of business activity": where SIE data shows production stuck before distribution, the bottleneck is usually a road, power, storage or security, and that is where strategic investment belongs.
By giving every State and LGA its own SIE scorecard under the same open standard, built from its own communities' records. States then steer by their own data and compare themselves with one another, without the Federal Government directing them. The Federal role is to commission the standard and accredit platforms; States and LGAs may commission monitors and direct their own infrastructure by the same data.
Within government the roles are mostly clear, though the Ministries of Finance, Budget and Economic Planning, and Trade each hold part of planning and need a single line of ownership for the Scorecard. The large gap is outside government: producers, traders, workers, communities, platforms, independent monitors and the media have no defined role, although Principle 2 names private enterprise as the principal engine of the economy. Section 5.2 proposes the instruments that fill that gap.
It is practical and valuable. A major intervention should include any measure that changes a price, tax, tariff, levy, subsidy or licence across more than one State; any programme above a published cost threshold; and any measure that affects a sector's SIE in more than one State. Its KPIs should include the four SIE flows in the places affected; it should be published before adoption; and its review should compare the promise with reported activity.
Quarterly and annual reporting is too slow when the data can be continuous. We recommend live SIE dashboards for every community, LGA and State, a monthly national SIE report, and the annual Scorecard on Independence Day. The Scorecard should lead with production, distribution, consumption and waste at national, State and LGA level, with the existing GDP indicators kept in an international annex. Performance should be verified by those who do not deliver it: independent community monitors, the NBS using non-private platform data, and the media, never by the MDAs being assessed.
Law helps, and the National Assembly should enact the SIE reporting standard, platform accreditation and data protection rules. But law can be amended. Lasting effect comes from ownership: when businesses and the people who run them operate within the Framework every day, and draw customers, records, credit and protection from it, no administration can unwind it. Because the system requires no government finance beyond the strategic infrastructure its data calls for, there is no budget line to cut. Independent institutions and the media should oversee every participant, government included.
Our full proposal is set out in this document. We commend the Ministry for publishing the draft for public comment and for writing it so that any citizen can read it. Ahia (ahiaapp.com) is built and live, and we are ready to demonstrate how organisations and communities record production, distribution, consumption and waste in daily operation, and how the SIE can be read from a single business up to a community.
Manage your:
Bring every process into one place: