The Independent Media and Policy Initiative (IMPI) has issued a formal policy challenge to all presidential candidates and political platforms contesting in the upcoming 2027 general elections.
In its latest policy statement, IMPI asserted that a $1 Trillion Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2031 must serve as the uncompromised headline benchmark for any credible national governance.
According to IMPI’s policy analysis, achieving a $1 trillion economy is not an abstract statistical target, but the structural prerequisite for permanently eradicating multidimensional poverty, attracting foreign direct capital, and creating millions of high-productivity jobs for Nigeria’s expanding demographic base.
Key highlights of the Policy Statement signed by IMPI’s Chairman, Dr Niyi Akinsiju, includes the Think-Tank insistence that scaling the national economy to $1 trillion automatically elevates Nigeria into an investment-grade sovereign rating.
This, according to IMPI, eliminates the “high-risk” penalty associated with investment inflow into the country thus, facilitating the unlocking of sovereign wealth assets and global pension funds for major domestic infrastructure without swelling national debt.
IMPI also propositioned the transitioning of the economy beyond informal labor by requiring deep-water port activations, facilitating northern agro-processing corridors, and urban digital tech hubs in states of Southern Nigeria which will lead to moving over 50% of the informal workforce into formal, tax-compliant, high-yield employment.
It explains in the Policy Statement that, “as $1 trillion economy cannot be built on retail trade or raw oil extraction alone; it requires deep-water industrialisation.
Scaling to this size means fully activating the country’s five-port maritime corridors, establishing agro-processing clusters across the North, and scaling digital tech hubs in urban centres.
These sectors create millions of formal, high-yield jobs that provide steady incomes, healthcare access, and career longevity—instantly pulling families out of vulnerable poverty cycles.”
According to IMPI, recent structural reforms, including the removal of the fuel subsidy, unification of the foreign exchange market, mid-2026 GDP growing to $377.37 billion, and fortification of gross external reserves to $54.08 billion—have built a broad-based, non-oil growth momentum reaching 4.43% real GDP growth in Q2 2026, and therefore, no alternative candidates can claim that a trillion-dollar economy is not realistic.
“By our analysis, no alternative candidates can claim that a $1 trillion economy is an unrealistic arithmetic problem.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s federal administration has already done the structural heavy lifting and painful foundational adjustments.
“By pushing past economic stagnation, current policy frameworks have cleared a clear runway for the next phase of national expansion, including accelerating the country’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 4.43% in the second quarter of 2026, up from 4.23% in the same quarter of 2025.
This shows a steady quarter-on-quarter expansion from 3.89% in the first quarter of 2026, driven heavily by a broad-based, non-oil economy.
It is also the highest quarterly economic growth rate since Q2 2021.
“The monetary valuation of the economy is now $377.37 billion, reflecting a surge of $134.37 billion in 12 months after the rebasing of the economy in mid-year 2025, when it stood at $243bn. Real GDP growth shows structural resilience led by non-oil activities, proving that growth is now organically generated rather than driven by volatile crude oil price cycles,” IMPI asserts in the Policy Statement.
On these counts, IMPI urged voters and the media to reject vague rhetoric and demand that all alternative presidential candidates should publish explicit, numbers-driven Sectoral Capital Allocation Models detailing how they intend to achieve a $1 trillion economy’s size between 2027 and 2031.
“The national economic debate cannot be won by opposition to hardship alone; a superior vision for prosperity must win it.
We are here today because Nigeria’s political conversation is fundamentally broken. Every day, we watch politicians across all parties trade personal insults, argue over tribal mathematics, and complain about current economic hardships. But complaining is not a policy.
Grievance is not a governance strategy,” IMPI asserted and added: “If a presidential candidate claims a faster route to a $1 trillion valuation, he should outline the specific fiscal policies, trade mechanisms, and deregulation models he will deploy to attract the massive quantum of private global capital required to double current targets.”
