Nigeria’s Development Crisis: Opportunity Cost and the Failure of Priorities

The Hidden Price Nigeria Pays for Bad Priorities. 

Don Kenobi argues that:

There is a hidden price a nation pays for bad priorities.

In a poor country like Nigeria, this cost is not abstract. It shows up as:

Hunger

Darkness

Collapsed hospitals

Broken schools

Lost lives...

....That this is the real cost of prestige projects in a struggling nation.

What looks like “development” on paper often masks a deeper development crisis:

One driven not by lack of ideas — but by the failure to choose wisely.

How Bad Priorities Are Keeping Nigeria Poor:

The Opportunity Cost Truth**

Opportunity cost and the ladder of priorities explain why Nigeria must rethink development. Opportunity cost, simply put, is the hidden price a nation pays for bad priorities.

In a poor country like Nigeria, this cost is not abstract. It shows up as - Hunger, Darkness, Collapsed hospitals, Broken schools, Insecurity, Lost lives....

That this is the real cost of prestige projects in a struggling nation.

What looks like “development” on paper often masks a deeper development crisis — one driven not by lack of ideas, but by the failure to choose wisely.

Opportunity Cost and the Ladder of Priorities

Opportunity cost and priority-setting are everything for a poor country.

This is not theory.

This is survival economics.

Have you ever heard of opportunity cost?

Class 4 economics?

Class 3 maybe?

No?

Let me explain as calmly as I can.

What Opportunity Cost Really Means

Opportunity cost simply means:

What you give up by choosing one thing over another.

For a rich country, the cost of policy mistakes is mild inconvenience.

For a poor country like Nigeria?

The cost of mistakes is:

1. Lives
2. Hunger
3. Darkness
4. Disease
5. Lost generations

The Real Cost of Waste

When you spend $10 billion on infrastructure projects in poor countries, such as Nigeria, you are also choosing to forfeit:

1. Hospitals
2. Clean water
3. Power
4. Schools
5. Security
6. Jobs

This trade-off is the real tax on the poor.

The Ladder of Priorities Is Not Optional

The Ladder of Priorities is not optional for a poor nation like Nigeria. 🇳🇬

Poor countries do not have the luxury of prestige projects.

The priority ladder is brutal and simple:

1. Food security
2. Basic healthcare
3. Electricity
4. Education
5. Water and sanitation
6. Security
7. Jobs and industry

Then — and only then — can projects such as the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Road be justified.

Final Truth

If you invert this ladder, you are not developing.

You are performing development for cameras.

I rest my case.

Don Kenobi

**#BigAgendaAfrica #OpportunityCost #NigeriaDevelopment #PrioritiesMatter

#DevelopmentEconomics #GoodGovernance #NigeriaEconomy #PublicSpending

#PolicyFailure #SustainableDevelopment #Accountability #LeadershipMatters

#AfricaDevelopment #FixNigeria #EconomicJustice**