It is the refusal to treat security as a central economic variable rather than a parallel sectoral issue, argues K BOLANLE ATI-JOHN
Nigeria enters 2026 with something it has not enjoyed in a long time: a narrow but genuine margin for choice. After years of macroeconomic turbulence, the immediate threat of collapse has receded. Inflation, while still burdensome for households, has begun to ease. The exchange rate, once a symbol of disorder, has stabilised. External reserves have been rebuilt to levels not seen in years. Confidence, tentative and cautious, is returning to markets and boardrooms.
This moment has rightly been described by Nigeria’s leading policy and business voices as a transition from stabilisation to consolidation. Stabilisation is the phase in which a country stops the bleeding. Consolidation is the phase in which it decides whether recovery will endure or quietly unravel. History is unambiguous on this point. Many countries stabilise. Far fewer consolidate. And when consolidation fails, it is rarely because policymakers lack technical sophistication or economic insight. It fails because the underlying problem has been misdiagnosed.
Nigeria now risks such a misdiagnosis.
The current economic conversation, including the most influential assessments shaping government and business expectations, is broadly correct about the macroeconomic picture. But it remains incomplete in its understanding of what consolidation requires in a country like Nigeria. The missing link is not another fiscal adjustment or a marginal monetary recalibration. It is the persistent refusal to treat security as a central economic variable rather than a parallel sectoral issue.
Until this changes, Nigeria’s recovery will remain fragile improved on paper, but exposed in practice.
Macroeconomic stabilisation is a necessary achievement. It restores confidence, curbs panic, and creates room for policy. Nigeria’s recent reforms have done exactly that. But stabilisation is a pause, not a destination. It buys time. It does not, by itself, create resilience. Consolidation is the far more demanding phase. It is the point at which gains become irreversible, expectations shift from fear to confidence, and institutions begin to matter more than personalities. It is also the phase at which reform efforts most often falter.
The early signs of this tension are already visible. Economic growth remains below the level required to absorb a rapidly expanding population. Food prices continue to dominate household distress despite a general disinflation trend. Agriculture and manufacturing, the sectors that anchor broad based prosperity, remain constrained. Investment flows, though improved, are still skewed toward short term instruments rather than long term productive commitments. These outcomes are not anomalies. They are signals.
They are also security conditioned realities.
Nigeria’s economy does not operate in the abstract space assumed by many economic models. It operates in contested territory physically, legally, and institutionally. Farmers do not decide whether to plant based solely on price signals or access to credit. They decide based on whether they can reach their land safely and whether their harvest can get to market. Transporters do not calculate margins in isolation; they factor in unsafe roads, unpredictable checkpoints, and the risk of loss. Manufacturers hedge not just against inflation and exchange rate volatility, but against power failures, logistics disruptions, and insecurity along supply chains. Investors do not price Nigeria solely on macro indicators; they discount physical exposure, legal uncertainty, and the enforceability of contracts.
These are not secondary inconveniences. They are decisive economic variables.
Food inflation in Nigeria is not primarily a monetary phenomenon. It is a security phenomenon. It reflects disrupted production zones, unsafe transport corridors, and fragmented access to markets. Logistics costs are not merely a consequence of infrastructure deficits; they are shaped by insecurity, informal toll systems, and weak enforcement. The subdued response of long term investment is not simply a function of interest rates; it is driven by uncertainty over whether assets can be protected, disputes resolved, and economic order maintained.
Yet economic policy continues to treat these realities as exogenous shocks unfortunate interruptions rather than structural constraints.
For decades, Nigeria has framed security largely as a cost centre, an unavoidable expenditure to be funded alongside other priorities. This framing is analytically flawed and strategically costly. Security is not a drag on growth. It is a prerequisite for it. Every economy that has sustained growth has done so on the back of enforceable order: predictable rules, protected assets, safe movement, and credible authority. Where these conditions weaken, economic performance follows. Where they strengthen, productivity responds.
Nigeria’s challenge is not a shortage of economic ideas. It is the fragility of the space in which those ideas must operate.
A country cannot consolidate its currency while losing control of productive territory. It cannot sustain disinflation while food systems operate under persistent threat. It cannot deepen private investment while firms bear unpriced physical and legal risks. And it cannot expect citizens to endure reform pain indefinitely when insecurity erodes daily life. Stabilisation creates time. Security determines whether that time is converted into lasting strength.
History offers a clear pattern. When consolidation fails, it is rarely because reform is abandoned outright. It fails because the social and economic environment in which reform must take root remains hostile. Inflation returns not because central banks lose discipline, but because supply chains fracture. Fiscal gains erode not because budgets loosen, but because leakage persists in ungoverned spaces. Investment stalls not because policy reverses, but because risk remains opaque and unmanageable. Public support fades not because citizens reject reform in principle, but because they experience sacrifice without protection.
Nigeria exhibits all these vulnerabilities. The danger is not dramatic collapse. It is gradual relapse: growth that never quite accelerates, inflation that never quite disappears, investment that never quite commits, and a public that grows quietly cynical. This is the most dangerous outcome of all, because it appears stable until it is not.
If consolidation is to succeed, it must be redefined. It cannot be limited to policy continuity or macro discipline. It must encompass governance consolidation: the state’s ability to secure the economic space in which markets operate. This requires a shift in thinking as much as in policy.
Security must be embedded in macroeconomic analysis, not appended to it. Inflation, productivity, and growth projections that ignore insecurity are incomplete. Security is not an external shock; it is an internal driver. Productive and logistics corridors must be treated as macroeconomic assets. Agricultural belts, transport routes, energy infrastructure, ports, and trade nodes are not merely sectoral concerns. Their security underpins price stability, export performance, and employment. Reform dividends must be visible in daily life. No consolidation survives if citizens experience reform as extraction without protection. Stability must be felt on roads, in markets, and in households, not only in aggregate statistics. And institutions must act from a shared logic. Monetary, fiscal, security, and justice institutions cannot operate in silos if consolidation is to endure. Economic recovery and security stability are indivisible.
This is not an argument for securitising economic policy. It is an argument for realism. Economies do not grow in abstraction. They grow in places, places that must be governed.
Nigeria’s leaders have shown political courage in pursuing difficult reforms under severe constraints. That courage has bought the country a window. The question now is how that window is used. Consolidation can either entrench stability or expose fragility. It can transform reform into lasting order, or allow gains to dissipate under pressure. The difference will not be decided by additional communiqués or marginal policy adjustments. It will be decided by whether Nigeria confronts the uncomfortable truth that security is not adjacent to the economy. It is foundational to it.
If security remains a parallel concern, addressed rhetorically but not structurally integrated into economic strategy, Nigeria’s recovery will remain vulnerable to the very forces it seeks to escape. If, however, security is deliberately treated as a core economic input measured, prioritised, and coordinated alongside fiscal and monetary policy, Nigeria can convert stabilisation into something rarer and more valuable: durability.
History will not judge Nigeria on whether it stabilised its economy. Many countries do. It will judge whether Nigeria consolidated, whether it understood what consolidation required, and whether it acted while the opportunity was still open. Windows of this kind do not remain open indefinitely, and when they close, they rarely reopen on kinder terms.
Rear Admiral Ati-John (rtd) writes from Lagos
Leave a comment