Nigeria’s challenge is not a shortage of capital but a lack of viable investment opportunities capable of attracting and absorbing available funds, stakeholders at the 2026 CEO Forum of the UN Global Compact Network Nigeria have said.
The forum, held in Lagos under the theme “Financing a Dignified Future: Aligning Capital, Policy and Business Action,” brought together chief executives, policymakers, financiers, regulators and development partners to examine how investment capital could be channelled into productive activities that generate jobs, strengthen businesses and improve living standards.
The discussions repeatedly returned to a central question: if capital is available, what is preventing more of it from flowing into Nigeria’s productive economy?
Speaking at the event, CEO and Executive Director of the UN Global Compact Network Nigeria, Naomi Nwokolo, challenged participants to move beyond repeatedly identifying the country’s long-standing economic constraints and instead focus on interventions that could be implemented immediately.
She said a dignified future must combine economic growth with better opportunities for workers, entrepreneurs and communities.
“A dignified future is one in which businesses can grow and remain competitive, entrepreneurs can access capital to scale, workers earn a living wage, communities participate in economic opportunity, and the natural environment is not sacrificed for short-term gain,” Nwokolo said.
Investors want to know what is holding them back
The need for a more direct conversation between government and investors was highlighted by the Director-General of the North-West Governors Forum, Maryam Yahaya, who represented the forum at the gathering.
Yahaya said governments had traditionally approached investors by presenting the economic potential of their regions and asking them to bring in capital.
She argued that the conversation needed to change, with investors encouraged to identify the specific barriers preventing them from committing funds.
“If it is security, tell us. If it is power, or our processes are too slow, or if a regulation does not make commercial sense, we would like to know,” she said.
The approach, she suggested, would allow policymakers to focus on practical obstacles rather than relying solely on broad investment-promotion campaigns.
Zamfara positions preparation as investment strategy
Governor Dauda Lawal of Zamfara State presented his administration’s experience as an example of how policy preparation, data and infrastructure could be used to create conditions for investment.
The state’s 10-year development plan, covering 2025 to 2034, is designed to provide greater policy predictability for businesses and investors.
Lawal said Zamfara was also seeking to move beyond the extraction and export of raw materials by encouraging processing, local participation, skills development and job creation.
Construction has begun on a lithium mining and processing plant in Zurumi Local Government Area with Chinese investment, while the state is pursuing large-scale solar investment with the GCL Group.
According to the governor, the sequence of reforms mattered. He said improved security and access to better data had helped create an environment in which investors could approach the state.
He said the availability of geophysical data had attracted potential investors from China and the United Arab Emirates, rather than requiring the state to approach them first.
Lawal also highlighted the increase in internally generated revenue in the state, saying it had risen from about N90 million when he assumed office to roughly N45 billion monthly.
The state has also developed an international airport, which the governor said was part of efforts to improve connectivity and access for businesses and investors.
Calling on investors to engage with the state early, Lawal said: “Don’t wait until the food is ready and then you start rushing. Come, partner and build with us.”
Financial inclusion remains a major gap
While much of the forum focused on investment capital, Deputy Managing Director of First Bank of Nigeria, Ini Ebong, shifted attention to the millions of Nigerians who remain inadequately integrated into the formal financial system.
Ebong rejected the idea that financial inclusion should be treated simply as a corporate social responsibility initiative.
“Financial inclusion is not a CSR line item, neither is it charity. It is about building infrastructure,” he said.
Citing the World Bank’s 2025 Global Findex Report and data from EFInA, Ebong said 63 per cent of Nigerian adults had accounts, while 84 per cent owned mobile phones.
However, only 43 per cent saved formally and just nine per cent borrowed from formal sources.
The figures, he argued, point to a distinction between having access to financial services and having sufficient financial resilience to use those services effectively.
FirstBank’s response includes an agent network of 322,000 agents, which the bank said covers 99 per cent of Nigeria’s local government areas.
According to the bank, more than 3.4 million previously unbanked Nigerians have accessed formal financial services through the network.
The bank also said its digital lending platforms disbursed more than N1 trillion in 2025, while FirstGem, its women-focused initiative, had financed more than 50,000 accounts through a N5 billion revolving fund.
But Ebong said expanding the supply of financial services was only part of the problem. The deeper challenge, he argued, was ensuring that individuals and businesses were capable of taking on and responsibly using formal financing.
“There’s way more capital to be deployed towards lending in Nigeria than there is capacity to absorb it,” he said.
He said many small businesses remained difficult to finance because their owners were unfamiliar with basic financial requirements, including proper bookkeeping, documentation and the separation of personal finances from business finances.
Pension funds face limited investment opportunities
The challenge of finding bankable projects was also highlighted by Custodian Investment’s Group Chief Operating Officer, Adeniyi Falade.
Falade pointed to Nigeria’s pension industry, which has accumulated approximately N32 trillion in less than two decades.
Despite the size of the pool, he said less than three per cent had been allocated to infrastructure and about two per cent to real estate, while nearly 70 per cent remained invested in Federal Government bonds.
For Falade, the figures illustrated the difference between having large pools of institutional capital and having enough credible projects into which that capital can be deployed.
The priority, he said, should be the creation of investment opportunities with the structure, revenue models and risk profiles required to attract institutional investors.
“Creating the right bankable opportunities, the right bankable projects” was central to moving capital into the real economy, he said.
Power sector needs more than new generation
The same issue emerged in discussions about Nigeria’s electricity market.
Managing Director of Sahara Power Group, Anthony Youdeowei, said the cost of upgrading electricity distribution infrastructure illustrated the scale of investment required across the sector.
Citing a USAID study, Youdeowei said bringing a distribution network to world-class standards could require approximately $750 million over 10 years.
Sahara Power has built a new power plant and recently laid the foundation for another in Lagos State.
But Youdeowei said increasing generation capacity would not, by itself, resolve Nigeria’s electricity challenges.
“If the power cannot get to the end consumer, then there really is no point,” he said.
He added that investors also needed confidence that the regulatory and commercial environment would allow them to recover their investments and earn reasonable returns.
That, he said, requires policy certainty and tariffs capable of supporting sustainable investment.
From available capital to productive investment
Across the discussions at the CEO Forum, the message was consistent: Nigeria’s investment challenge cannot be addressed simply by attracting more money into the country.
The country also needs stronger pipelines of bankable projects, predictable policies, reliable infrastructure, financially capable businesses and mechanisms that enable institutional capital to move into productive sectors.
For businesses, that means becoming more transparent and investment-ready. For government, stakeholders argued, it means addressing security, infrastructure, regulation and policy uncertainty. For financial institutions, it means developing products and systems capable of reaching underserved businesses and individuals.
The underlying challenge is therefore not merely how to raise capital, but how to create the conditions under which capital can be deployed effectively — and translated into businesses, jobs, infrastructure and broader economic opportunity.