Nigeria does not so much attract foreign direct investment as concentrate it. Capital does not flow across the federation; instead, it pools in a handful of safe harbours and evaporates almost everywhere else.
The numbers are stark. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in the first nine months of 2024, 32 of Nigeria’s 36 states recorded zero capital importation. This was not a marginal decline; it was a total blackout. Investment flowed into just five jurisdictions, creating a fractured map of economic viability.
Lagos, the commercial nerve centre, absorbed roughly $4.8 billion between the first and third quarters. The Federal Capital Territory received about $2.4 billion. In contrast, vast swathes of the country, including states with immense agricultural and mineral potential, received nothing. This is the geography of confidence in Nigeria, where capital has become an exile in its own country.
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The pattern is not new. In 2020, total capital importation stood at about $9.68bn. By 2021, it had fallen to roughly $6.7bn. In 2022, inflows slipped again to around $5.3bn. In 2023, they reached approximately $3.9bn. In the first three quarters of 2024, inflows rebounded to roughly $7bn. Yet through boom and bust alike, the distribution barely changed. Lagos and Abuja dominated. Much of the country remained untouched.
The cartography of risk
Foreign investors are not sentimental actors; they are custodians of capital who price risk with dispassion. Where risk is measurable, they demand higher returns. Where it is unquantifiable, they retreat.
“No investor will risk their money in an unsafe environment or unstable state,” notes Muda Yusuf, CEO of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise. He argues that the extreme concentration of capital highlights a fundamental disparity in readiness. Investors follow ecosystems of safety and infrastructure. Lagos has one; most other states do not.
The result is a federation divided into investable and uninvestable zones. The opportunity cost of this divide is not abstract; it is quantifiable. If the roughly $7 billion that entered Nigeria in early 2024 were averaged across the federation, each destination might have seen inflows of $1.4 billion. For the 32 states that received zero, this figure represents the scale of forgone opportunity: a “ghost budget” of lost factories, technology transfer, and employment.
The economic tax of terror
Nowhere is the cost of this absence more visible than in the agrarian belts of the North-Central and North-West.
In Kwara State, once a bridge between the north and south, rising banditry has imposed a heavy tax on economic life. The insecurity is no longer just a security challenge; it is a brake on GDP. In rural hubs like Kaiama, Baruten, and Edu, farmers have abandoned fertile land, leading to plummeting crop yields and spiralling food prices.
Between November last year and February this year, criminal attacks reportedly claimed no fewer than 400 lives in some local government areas of the state. Many residents now live in fear, suffering psychological stress and sleepless nights due to persistent insecurity. Communities; Woro, Nuku and others affected by attacks frequently experience displacement. Farms are left uncultivated, local businesses collapse, poverty levels increase, and additional pressure is placed on urban centres such as Ilorin.
In addition, ransom demands have imposed heavy financial strain on families and communities, who often pay substantial sums to secure the release of kidnapped relatives. These payments deplete household savings and divert funds that could otherwise be invested in small businesses or essential services. In many instances, small business owners have faced financial ruin while trying to support affected friends and relatives.
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Educational and social services have also suffered. When insecurity escalates, schools, healthcare outreach programmes, and markets are disrupted because people fear moving children or patients without assurances of safety. The security challenges in Kwara also led to the relocation of the state’s NYSC orientation camp from Yikpata in Edu local government area to the Kwara State Polytechnic campus in Ilorin.
Further east, in Plateau State, the destruction of capital is literal. “My warehouse was burnt down because of insecurity,” says Ruth Manu, a produce trader who fled the state after losing her livelihood overnight.
John Wuyep, chairman of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) in Plateau, warned that the violence has trapped farmers in uncertainty. “Many farmers in areas like Bokkos are unable to go to farms alone. They now have to go with agro-rangers,” Wuyep said. The result is a collapse in productivity that threatens national food security. “When farmers cannot farm safely and traders cannot store produce securely, businesses collapse.”
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Army has intensified efforts to restore peace in Plateau State following the approval of the immediate deployment of special forces by Waidi Shaibu, the Chief of Army Staff.
Elite troops from the Chief of Army Staff Intervention Battalion arrived in Jos recently to confront renewed banditry and violent attacks.
The vicious cycle
This retreat of capital creates a self-reinforcing cycle. When investment concentrates in a narrow corridor like Lagos-Abuja, regional inequality deepens. States with zero inflows face thinner formal labour markets and eroding fiscal capacity.
Without jobs, the pool of recruits for banditry and insurgency widens, fueling the very insecurity that drove investors away. Bismarck Rewane, CEO of Financial Derivatives Company, has long argued that foreign capital gravitates only toward jurisdictions with stability and scale. Where those foundations are weak, long-term projects cannot survive.
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We are open to investors- Yobe govt
Despite the gloom, state governments in the hardest-hit regions are attempting to pivot. In the North-East, where the Boko Haram insurgency has raged for over a decade, officials are trying to bypass the blockade of fear by appealing directly to public-private partnerships (PPPs).
The Yobe State government recently unveiled new infrastructure projects, including markets and roads, in a bid to signal a return to normalcy. “Yobe State is safe and secure,” insisted Abdullahi Bego, Commissioner for Home Affairs, urging investors to return.
Similarly, in Borno State, the epicenter of the insurgency, Governor Babagana Zulum’s administration is shifting focus to the private sector to bridge the funding gap as humanitarian aid shrinks. “The government is now shifting its attention to private-sector engagement,” said Dauda Illiya, the governor’s spokesperson. He highlighted recent meetings with banking and industrial titans in Abuja as evidence of a renewed push for investment.
Nigeria does not lack potential; it lacks uniform confidence. Until insecurity is addressed structurally rather than episodically, and until subnational investment climates converge toward credible standards of safety, most Nigerian states will remain off the map of global
capital
