The organisation argued that millions of Nigerians produce the country’s wealth through their labour, but the benefits remain concentrated in the hands of a small political and economic elite.
The Centre for Human Rights and Social Advancement (CEFSAN) has decried worsening economic hardship in Nigeria under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration, accusing the Federal Government of imposing the burden of its economic policies on workers and poor Nigerians.
In a statement issued on Friday, September 11, 2026, and signed by its Executive Director, Yusha’u Sani Yankuzo, Esq., CEFSAN rejected the Tinubu administration’s presentation of its economic programme as an unavoidable route to national prosperity.
The organisation said the government’s policies had placed an enormous burden on workers, students, pensioners, farmers, artisans and millions of Nigerians surviving in the informal economy, while wealthy Nigerians and those with political influence remained comparatively insulated from the effects of the economic crisis.
“Nigeria’s crisis is not fundamentally a crisis of scarcity but a crisis of ownership, distribution and class power,” CEFSAN said.
The organisation argued that millions of Nigerians produce the country’s wealth through their labour, but the benefits remain concentrated in the hands of a small political and economic elite.
It said Nigerians were being asked to endure rising living costs, declining purchasing power and weakened public services in the name of economic recovery, while the conditions for capital accumulation remained favourable.
CEFSAN said economic policies on taxation, wages, subsidies, public spending, privatisation and social services are not class-neutral, arguing that such decisions determine which sections of society bear the greatest economic burden.
“When workers and poor communities are subjected to austerity while wealth remains concentrated and public resources continue to be vulnerable to elite capture, the state is effectively transferring the cost of economic adjustment onto those least capable of bearing it,” the group said.
The organisation called on the Tinubu administration to abandon what it described as austerity and neoliberal economic policies and adopt a programme focused on workers and the wider population.
It demanded a genuinely living wage, universal and adequately funded public education and healthcare, massive investment in housing, transportation, electricity and productive industries, as well as progressive taxation on wealth and high incomes.
CEFSAN also called for stronger protection of workers’ rights and decisive action against corruption, illicit financial flows and the alleged private appropriation of public resources.
The group further demanded greater public control and democratic accountability in the management of Nigeria’s natural resources and strategic economic sectors.
It said the country’s oil, gas, minerals and productive assets should be treated as a collective national inheritance and used to promote industrialisation, employment, social welfare and economic sovereignty rather than private enrichment.
CEFSAN urged workers, trade unions, students, farmers, informal-sector workers, women, youths and progressive civil society organisations to build peaceful and democratic popular movements capable of challenging inequality and demanding a redistribution of economic and political power.
The organisation said Nigerians had endured enough hardship in the name of economic reforms whose benefits remained uncertain while their costs were “immediate and painfully real.”
“A society in which the many produce while the few accumulate cannot be described as just, democratic or prosperous,” CEFSAN said.
The group maintained that Nigeria’s vast wealth should be deployed to guarantee human dignity and social welfare, insisting that economic policy must prioritise human needs over the interests of capital.
SOURCE: saharareporters.com
