Sam Diala, THEWILL

The UNDP–Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative report released on October 12, 2026, highlights deprivation across health, education, and living standards. It also identifies particularly severe poverty in rural communities and northern Nigeria. According to the report, 113 million Nigerians, or 48.7 per cent of the population, are classified as multi dimensionally poor.

At the January 2026 launch of the Gas Master Plan in Abuja, NNPC Group Chief Executive Officer, Bashir Ojulari, said the investments could expand demand for Nigerian pipeline contractors, fabrication companies, gas-processing equipment suppliers, engineering consultants, maintenance providers and technical workers.

The Federal Ministry of Finance has challenged recent reports, based on the World Bank’s October Nigeria Development Update, that interest payments consumed 124 per cent of  Federal Government revenue in the first half of the year.

For decades, the NNPC Limited has occupied a central but complicated position in Nigeria’s economy. It is simultaneously a commercial enterprise, a custodian of the country’s interests in the petroleum industry and a strategic instrument of government energy policy. Reconciling these responsibilities with the discipline required of a modern commercial enterprise has remained a defining challenge.

Sterling Financial Holdings Company Plc delivered an impressive set of 2026 half-year results, with gross earnings rising by 31.5 percent to N279.6 billion and profit after tax climbing by 20.4 percent to N50.30 billion.

At the commission’s 2026 annual media conference in Lagos recently, PenCom’s director-general, Ms Omolola Oloworaran, presented a catalogue of reforms and performance indicators showing a pension industry that has expanded significantly in assets, membership, compliance and investment reach.

Wema Bank’s H1 numbers reveal an institution that is growing rapidly, but whose growth is accompanied by falling earnings per share, a sharp contraction in fee income, rising loan-impairment charges, deteriorating cost efficiency and loan expansion that is running considerably faster than deposit mobilisation.

Women are not asking Nigeria for charity. They are asking for the opportunity, capital, education, security and institutional space to convert their enormous contribution into economic and political power.

Announced amid renewed pressure from high fuel prices, rising transport costs and persistent household hardship, the initiative is being presented by the government as a targeted intervention to cushion the impact of global crude oil price volatility without returning the country to the costly petrol subsidy regime abolished in May 2023.

Unilever Nigeria Plc reported revenue of N119.92 billion for the six months ended June 30, 2026, up 22.2 percent from N98.10 billion in the corresponding period of 2025. Gross profit rose 30 percent to N54.74 billion, while operating profit increased 29.5 percent to N24.36 billion.