Nigeria’s Next Crisis May Not Be Political — It May Be Trust

 

There is a crisis developing in Nigeria that may prove more consequential than the political battles dominating the headlines.

It is not a crisis that can be measured by the number of political defections, the strength of an opposition coalition or even the outcome of the next election.

It is quieter, deeper and much harder to reverse.

It is a crisis of trust.

Across Nigeria, citizens are being asked to believe that difficult economic reforms will eventually produce a better future, that public institutions can protect their interests, that elections can deliver meaningful change and that the systems governing their lives are fundamentally working.

But for millions of Nigerians, the question is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid:

Why should we believe them?

The question is not uniquely Nigerian.

Around the world, trust in governments, institutions, traditional media and even fellow citizens is under pressure. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, based on 33,938 respondents across 28 countries, found that only 32 per cent globally believe the next generation will be better off. The report also describes a growing retreat into smaller, more familiar circles as people become less willing to trust those who differ from them in values, backgrounds, sources of information or approaches to solving problems.

That should concern every democracy.

Because trust is not simply confidence in a president, political party or government.

Trust is the invisible contract that allows society to function.

A citizen pays taxes because he believes government will use public money responsibly. A customer deposits money in a bank because she believes the institution will protect her savings. A voter queues at a polling station because he believes his vote will be counted. A defendant enters a courtroom because he believes the judge will listen to the evidence and apply the law fairly.

A reader believes a journalist because the reader assumes the journalist has made a genuine effort to establish the truth.Remove those assumptions and society begins to change.

Nigeria’s Contradiction:

Nigeria presents an intriguing contradiction. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer placed Nigeria among the countries with relatively high overall institutional trust, giving it a Trust Index score of 72. Yet the same research found that government trust remains low across the African markets examined, while trust is increasingly concentrated in employers, business leaders and close personal networks.

That apparent contradiction deserves closer attention. A country can record a relatively high aggregate trust score while citizens remain deeply sceptical of particular institutions.It suggests that trust is not disappearing altogether. It is becoming selective.

People may trust the person they know more than the institution they do not know. They may trust their employer more than government. They may trust a family member, religious leader, community figure or social-media personality more than a national institution.

That is potentially more complicated than simply saying that society has lost trust. It means people are choosing where to place it. And when trust becomes increasingly confined to familiar circles, society can become fragmented.

The 2026 Edelman research describes this phenomenon as growing “insularity” — people becoming less willing to trust those who think, live or obtain information differently from them.

For a country as diverse as Nigeria, the implications are profound. 

The Economics of Trust:

Nigeria's economic experience provides perhaps the clearest illustration. The Federal Government has defended the difficult reforms introduced under President Bola Tinubu, including the removal of petrol subsidies and major changes to the foreign-exchange regime, as necessary measures to stabilise the economy and restore investor confidences.

There are signs of improvement in some macroeconomic indicators. But the benefits of improving investor sentiment have not been fully felt equally by ordinary Nigerians.

A Reuters report published on Monday 10th August,2026,  highlighted the widening gap between stronger investor confidence and the continuing cost-of-living pressure confronting households. Foreign capital inflows have strengthened and the Nigerian stock market has performed strongly, while millions of citizens continue to struggle with food, transport and other essential expenses.

The World Bank similarly says recent reforms have improved macroeconomic stability and policy credibility, but warns that poverty remains widespread, with an estimated 63 per cent of Nigerians living below the national poverty line in 2025. It also says food inflation disproportionately affects poor households, which can spend as much as 70 per cent of their income on food.

This is where economics becomes inseparable from trust. A government can ask citizens to endure hardship if citizens believe the sacrifice is necessary, temporary and fairly distributed. But when people begin to believe that they are sacrificing while others are benefiting, economic hardship can become a crisis of legitimacy. The danger is not merely that people become angry.

They become cynical. And cynicism may be more dangerous to a democracy than anger. An angry citizen may protest.

A cynical citizen may simply stop believing that participation matters.

He may stop voting.

He may stop paying attention.

He may conclude that politicians are all the same. He may decide that public institutions exist primarily for the powerful. And eventually, he may retreat into the smaller community of people he believes he can trust. This is our story today.

When Politics Becomes Personal:

This is where Nigeria's experience intersects with a much larger global phenomenon.

Political disagreement is increasingly becoming social separation. People do not simply disagree about policies anymore. Increasingly, they distrust the people holding opposing opinions.

The person who votes differently becomes an enemy. The journalist reporting a different version of events becomes a propagandist.

The expert challenging a popular claim becomes part of a conspiracy.

The government introducing an unpopular policy becomes automatically dishonest.

The problem is not disagreement.

Democracy requires disagreement.

The problem begins when citizens lose the ability to disagree without losing their capacity to trust one another.

That is the point at which political competition can become social hostility.

The Social Media Problem:

Technology has made the situation even more complicated. Digital platforms have given billions of people unprecedented access to information. But they have also made it possible for individuals to construct entirely different versions of reality.

Two people can watch the same event and emerge convinced that completely different things happened.

Both can find communities online that confirm their beliefs.

Both can find information supporting their position.

Both can dismiss the other side as ignorant, manipulated or malicious.

The result is not simply misinformation.

It is the erosion of a shared reality.

And when citizens can no longer agree on basic facts, democracy faces a fundamental problem:

How can people make collective decisions when they no longer agree on what is true?

The challenge is becoming even greater as artificial intelligence makes it increasingly easy to produce convincing images, audio, video and documents.

The world may soon enter an information environment in which citizens cannot always determine whether what they are seeing or hearing is genuine.That creates a frightening possibility. People may not only believe false information. They may eventually stop believing genuine information because they assume that everything can be manufactured.

A society in which people believe that nothing can be trusted can become a society in which propaganda flourishes.

Journalism Has a Trust Problem Too

This places an enormous responsibility on journalism.

The media cannot rebuild public trust simply by demanding that audiences trust journalists.Trust has to be earned.

A journalist who publishes unverified information damages more than one story. A media organisation that consistently allows political interests, commercial pressure or ideological preferences to determine its reporting gradually destroys its credibility.

But journalism also cannot surrender to the idea that neutrality means treating truth and falsehood as equal. The responsibility of journalism is to establish what can reasonably be established, challenge those in power, distinguish fact from allegation, correct mistakes and give citizens reliable information with which to make informed decisions.

That responsibility becomes even more important in an age when the speed of information can overwhelm the ability to verify it.

The future of journalism will therefore depend not merely on how quickly reporters can publish. It will depend on whether audiences continue to believe that journalists are committed to truth.

Institutions Must Earn It:

The same principle applies to public institutions. Courts cannot demand public confidence.

They must demonstrate fairness.

Security agencies cannot simply ask citizens to respect them. They must demonstrate professionalism and accountability.

Government cannot repeatedly tell citizens that reforms are working.

It must demonstrate how those reforms are improving lives.

Elections cannot become credible simply because electoral authorities declare the results. They must be conducted in ways that convince citizens that their votes matter.

Businesses cannot advertise their way into permanent credibility. They must treat customers fairly.

Trust is therefore not a public-relations exercise. It is the accumulated result of repeated behaviour.

A government that acknowledges mistakes and corrects them may ultimately earn more confidence than one that insists it is always right.

A newspaper that promptly corrects an error may strengthen its credibility rather than weaken it.

A court that transparently explains difficult decisions may command respect even from people who disagree with its judgment.

Trust does not require perfection.

It requires integrity, consistency and accountability.

The Danger of Withdrawal:

The greatest threat to social stability may not always come from the people shouting in the streets. Sometimes it comes from the millions who quietly conclude that nothing will change.

That conclusion can be more dangerous than anger.

Anger can be channelled into action.

Cynicism produces withdrawal.

And when enough citizens withdraw from institutions, those institutions begin to lose the legitimacy required to function.

This is why the crisis of trust should not be treated as a mere public-relations problem.

It is a governance problem.

It is an economic problem.

It is a democratic problem.

And increasingly, it is a global social problem.

A Global Warning:

From Lagos to London, Washington to Nairobi, Johannesburg to New Delhi, societies are confronting different versions of the same fundamental question:

Who can we still believe?

The causes may differ.

In one country, it may be economic inequality. In another, political polarisation. Elsewhere, corruption, war, migration, misinformation, institutional failure or technological disruption may be driving distrust. But the underlying danger is remarkably similar.

People begin to retreat into communities of those who think like them. The 2026 Edelman research warns that this growing insularity is occurring alongside economic anxiety, geopolitical tension and technological disruption. It also found that the global trust gap between high- and low-income groups has more than doubled since 2012. That should not be dismissed as another annual survey. It is a warning about the architecture of modern society.

Can Trust Be Rebuilt?

The answer must be yes.

But trust cannot be demanded.

It cannot be legislated into existence.

It cannot be created by propaganda.

It cannot be restored by speeches telling citizens to be patient indefinitely.

Trust is rebuilt through behaviour.

A government rebuilds it by keeping difficult promises and explaining honestly when it cannot.

A court rebuilds it by applying the law fairly.

A police officer rebuilds it by respecting the citizen whose safety he has sworn to protect.

A journalist rebuilds it by choosing truth over sensationalism.

A business rebuilds it by treating customers and employees fairly.

And citizens rebuild it every time they decide that disagreement does not make another person an enemy.

Perhaps that is the lesson Nigeria — and the rest of the world — most urgently needs.

The greatest challenge facing societies may not simply be how to produce more wealth, hold more elections or build more institutions.

It may be how to persuade citizens that those institutions deserve to exist in the first place.

Because when trust disappears, everything becomes harder.

Governments struggle to govern.

Businesses struggle to operate.

Journalists struggle to be believed.

Courts struggle to command confidence.

Elections struggle to confer legitimacy.

And citizens retreat into increasingly smaller circles of people they believe they can trust.

But there is hope in recognising that trust is not a permanent resource. It can be lost.And it also can be rebuilt.

The question is whether leaders, institutions and citizens are willing to do the difficult work required to rebuild it.

Nigeria's future may therefore depend on something that cannot be printed on a currency note, measured in barrels of crude oil or promised during an election campaign.

It depends on whether citizens can once again look at their institutions — and at one another — and believe.

**Because trust is not merely what holds a society together. It is what makes society possible.**

This is My verdict.