Akin Adejumo has been farming poultry in Nigeria for ten years, but the past three have nearly broken him. When President Bola Tinubu's government ended fuel subsidies, Adejumo's transportation costs jumped tenfold almost overnight. Then currency devaluation pushed up the cost of imported feed inputs, and when he tried to raise prices to keep up, customers stopped buying. "I feel trapped," he says. "I need more working capital, but bank interest rates have gone through the roof. We're slowly going out of business."
His story is not unique. Businesses across Nigeria's agricultural and manufacturing sectors have taken the hardest hits from Tinubu's reform package, which removed fuel subsidies and dropped government support for the naira's exchange rate. To cool the inflation that followed, the Central Bank of Nigeria pushed its benchmark Monetary Policy Rate to a record high of 27.5 percent. Those rates sent a very clear signal to global investors: come and collect.
And collect they did. Capital importation into Nigeria surged from $3.91 billion in 2023 to $21.4 billion in 2025. In the first quarter of this year alone, inflows hit $10.37 billion, up sharply from $6.4 billion the previous quarter. On paper, that looks like a country swimming in investment.
The reality is something else entirely. Of the $9.86 billion that came in during the first quarter, more than 95 percent arrived as portfolio funds chasing high-yield bonds, Treasury bills, and other short-term interest-bearing instruments. Almost nothing filtered through to the farms, factories, and workshops that actually employ people and produce goods.
So Nigeria finds itself in a strange and painful position: flooded with capital that real-sector businesses cannot touch, while entrepreneurs like Adejumo sit and watch their life's work shrink. The money is here. The question is who it is actually working for.
Originally published by African Business.