In an interview with ACI Africa on Wednesday, February 4, Fr. Hyacinth Ichoku, the Vice Chancellor of Veritas University Abuja warned that unless Nigeria’s leadership gaps are addressed, insecurity and underdevelopment will continue to plague Africa’s most populous nation.
Fr. Ichoku spoke to ACI Africa on the sidelines of a three-day international conference on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that Veritas University organized.
“Poverty in Nigeria has become a daily, visible reality, walking the streets and invading homes in ways that shame a nation endowed with abundant human and natural resources,” the Nigerian Catholic Priest said.
He added, “Across cities and rural communities, millions of Nigerians go to bed hungry, unable to afford food, clean water, healthcare, or education, despite the country’s vast wealth. Everywhere you look is poverty.”
Focusing on Sustainable Development Goal 1 (No Poverty), the Catholic Priest noted that hunger remains a global scandal, citing estimates that more than 318 million people worldwide go to bed hungry each night.
He described the hunger reality as “not a good story to tell in a world that has experienced tremendous economic and social growth.”
Fr. Ichoku illustrated the human cost of poverty through personal experiences from his pastoral and professional life.
He recounted meeting a woman with six children who approached him after morning Mass, unable to speak but gesturing toward her mouth to signal hunger.
“She had gone to bed with her children without food,” he said, adding, “At midnight, one of the children started crying because there was no food in the house. The woman herself was crying.”
In another case, he spoke of a severely malnourished six-month-old child who died overnight, linking the tragedy to a lack of food and basic care.
Drawing on his experience as a nutrition consultant in several Nigerian states, Fr. Ichoku said he has encountered widespread cases of kwashiorkor and hospitals filled with malnourished children.
“And still, this is a country where so many people are so rich,” he lamented.
The Vice Chancellor linked Nigeria’s mass poverty to governance failures, particularly poor policy formulation and weak implementation.
He emphasized that national budgets should be effective tools for redistributing wealth, but said successive governments have failed to use them for that purpose.
“It’s all about policies and how they are implemented; we have not been having redistribution of the wealth of our country over time,” the Nigerian Catholic Priest said.
According to Fr. Ichoku, political power in Nigeria often serves narrow interests rather than the common good.
“When they get power, they promote their own interests, not the access of the people to resources,” he said.
On the issue of insecurity, Fr. Ichoku noted that violence is both a symptom and a consequence of poverty and inequality.
While insecurity worsens economic hardship, he said its roots lie in denied access to basic needs.
“When people don’t have access to education, health, food, and facilities, they are handicapped,” he explained. “Some of them become recruitment grounds for terrorism,” the Nigerian Catholic Priest said.
He added, “Boko Haram begins when you deny people access to basic needs. When people are deprived, rebellion is inevitable.”
Beyond poverty, Fr. Ichoku pointed to inequality, captured in SDG 10, as a challenge undermining Nigeria’s development.
He emphasized that the issue is not the absence of resources but their uneven distribution, both globally and nationally.
“About the 10 richest individuals in the world own more wealth than 50 percent of the world's population. Can you imagine what that means?” Fr. Ichoku said.
He noted that similar patterns exist in Nigeria, where a small elite controls enormous wealth while the majority struggle to survive.
According to him, this inequality is sustained by “prebendalism,” the intense competition for political power as the easiest route to accessing and controlling national resources.
“People believe access to power is the easiest way to get access to national resources, and once they have power, they decide who gets what,” he said.
Fr. Ichoku warned that the consequences of inaction are severe.
“It’s not about speaking big grammar; it’s about addressing the clear issues of our day,” he said, urging leaders to move beyond rhetoric and confront realities that are “embarrassing us” as societies.