Our Story

For more than a decade, the Nextier ecosystem has worked at the centre of Nigeria’s hardest development problems, with one aim: to build the society we want to live in. Its founder advised the Presidency on reforming the electricity industry. Nextier built tools that let the national electricity regulator forecast demand two decades ahead, and ran field pilots that halved commercial electricity losses. Nextier SPD built the Nextier Violent Conflict Database, whose 2025 report, “Mutations of Terror and Conflict”, recorded 5,291 violent incidents between 2020 and 2024, which killed or injured more than 20,000 people. Nextier polled rural voters in 12 states before the 2023 elections, and its Power Dialogue has run 119 editions.

That work taught a hard lesson: institutions cannot improve what they cannot see. They struggle when they lack the data to find their weaknesses, the capacity to respond, or the pressure to deliver. Citizens struggle too, when they lack the evidence to judge performance and demand better.

Why a foundation

A consulting firm works for its clients, on their questions, and much of what it learns stays with them. Some of the most important work cannot be done that way. Measuring whether institutions are improving, publishing evidence that the powerful may not welcome, and staying with a problem long after a contract ends all need an organisation that answers to the public.

Nextier Development Foundation was set up for that work. Registered in 2022, it is the independent, not-for-profit, public-interest arm of the Nextier ecosystem. It brings Nextier’s evidence-first method to where it serves the public most directly: vulnerable communities, the public record, and the civic institutions that hold power to account. It draws on the expertise of the wider ecosystem, but it sets its own agenda and publishes what it finds.

What we believe

A functioning society is defined by what it delivers: power that stays on, communities where people are safe, public money that becomes real infrastructure, and institutions that answer to the people. When institutions deliver these things, much else follows – including the growth that lifts people out of poverty. In 2025, some 139 million Nigerians lived in poverty. That is the measure of how much remains to be built.

A functioning society also needs more than capable institutions. It needs citizens, researchers, journalists, and civic groups armed with evidence to scrutinise those institutions and press for results. We must build the society we want to live in. That work begins with knowing what works, what fails, and why – and with aligning the elements needed to deliver the success we desire.