As Nigeria approaches the 2027 elections, economic hardship is raising an uncomfortable question: what happens when a young person’s hunger becomes someone else’s political opportunity?

Imagine, a 22 year old who hasn’t had a proper meal today. A man in a branded cap offers him a day’s pay and a free lunch to “stand with the party” at a rally. Nobody has mentioned violence yet.Is that young man a criminal, or a customer in a market where his hunger is the product?

According to the World Bank gazetteer, about 35 million Nigerians are projected to face acute food insecurity during the 2026 lean season, the worst hunger level in a decade. The World Bank estimated that 139 million Nigerians lived in poverty in 2025.

For the poorest households, food takes up most of the budget. Low-income families spend roughly 60 to 70 percent of their income on food, so rising food prices hit them hardest. When a plate of food swallows most of your income, a cash offer from a politician can look like the only door open.

The World Bank’s modelled youth unemployment rate for ages 15 to 24 was 5.34% in 2025. But the official definition counts only people actively looking for work, and it hides how many people are scraping by. NBS figures show millions trapped in informal, unstable jobs with little income security. A young person selling sachet water for ₦2,000 a day is “employed” in the data and still super broke in reality.

A study of Sara Suka thuggery in Bauchi State interviewed the people involved. It found that politicians, unemployment, poverty, illiteracy, drugs and the lure of money were all behind young people joining.

Research on the 2023 elections points the same way. Unemployment and economic hardship left youths open to recruitment by political actors offering financial incentives. A Kano study describes how unemployed youth are turned into marketable tools of violence, with drug abuse as a pathway in – Zamfara/Kano drug abuse and political thuggery study by Abdulkadir Baba Abubakar, PhD.

According to ACLED data, Nigeria lost 1,639 lives to electoral violence between 1999 and 2023. ACLED also recorded over 200 violent events involving party members and supporters, with nearly 100 deaths, in the 12 months before the 2023 election.

Counts differ by source. One monitoring group, KDI, documented 238 incidents and 28 deaths during the 2023 general elections themselves. The scale varies with how each group counts and which period it covers. The pattern doesn’t change, a d the next test is close. The 2027 polls are scheduled for January 16 and February 6, 2027.

These findings should be interpreted carefully, many such studies focus on particular communities or use qualitative interviews. They do not establish that every unemployed young person is vulnerable to recruitment, nor do they prove that poverty alone causes political violence.

What they do offer is a way to understand the problem beyond the headlines. A young person may be attracted by money, pressured by a network, influenced by friends, or drawn by the promise of status and protection. Several factors may operate together, and when political actors are willing to pay for intimidation, vulnerable people may become available for exploitation.

Sometimes, economic hardship may make an offer of quick money harder to refuse. But hunger does not erase personal responsibility, and poverty does not make violence inevitable.

Millions of struggling young Nigerians choose peaceful ways to survive. They work, study, trade, learn skills, care for relatives, and build businesses despite enormous obstacles.They deserve to be recognised for their choices, not stereotyped because of their circumstances.

Nigeria’s electoral laws prohibit certain forms of violence and the use of thugs, but effective enforcement must reach everyone against whom sufficient evidence exists.

As the 2027 elections approach, the country must confront an uncomfortable reality, which is; political violence can flourish when there are people willing to organise it, people willing to finance it, and people whose circumstances make recruitment easier.

No young person should have to choose between economic survival and personal safety. Also no politician’s ambition should be worth more than another person’s future.