Atedo Peterside, President of the ANAP Foundation and founder of IBTC Bank, has attributed the growing wave of terrorism and banditry in Nigeria to deep-rooted economic inequality and widespread poverty.
Speaking on Monday, the 5th of January, 2026, during Prime Time, a programme aired on Arise Television, Peterside explained that the country’s uneven distribution of wealth has created conditions that make some vulnerable individuals susceptible to recruitment by criminal and extremist groups.
According to him, while a segment of the population continues to prosper, a vast number of Nigerians remain trapped in extreme poverty, a disparity he described as dangerous for national stability.
He said: “Sometimes you can have an economy where the big guns are doing very well, their income is going up in the stock market and all, but I’m referring to the 140 million poor people. That’s where the problem is. And I think Nigeria has, clearly has an income distribution problem.
“We have the very wealthy, and we have the phenomenally poor, and you cannot have equilibrium when there are so many poor people around you. That’s why I wouldn’t say I’m frightened, but I pinch myself when I see wealthy people believe that everything will be fine forever, and around them, there are hundreds of millions of people who are poor.
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“I don’t want to equate poverty with insecurity, banditry or things like that, but I think it’s obvious that for the bandits, for the terrorist poor people, whom the state is offering next to nothing, some of them can be easily recruited. So, they become the potential future bandits and the future terrorists.
Also, we have 30 million children out of school. People who are not educated are increasingly difficult to integrate into a modern economy. So if they can’t do a proper job, they also become targets for bandits and terrorists. We have a serious problem on hand. So how can the President sit pretty,” he asked.
Peterside warned that without deliberate efforts to tackle poverty, improve education, and address income imbalance, insecurity would continue to escalate, posing a major threat to the country’s future.