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Nigeria’s latest increase in dollar millionaires is being driven largely by gains in financial assets and new business activity, with financial services, telecommunications, retail and real estate among the sectors where the country’s wealthiest individuals are building and holding wealth.

The entertainment industry, particularly film and music, is also emerging as a fast-growing source of wealth for High-Net-Worth Individuals (HNWIs), according to New World Wealth.

BusinessDay reported last week that the global wealth intelligence firm estimates Nigeria’s HNWI population rose to 8,100 in June 2026 from 7,200 a year earlier, adding 900 people with more than $1 million in liquid wealth.

The increase marked Nigeria’s first annual rise in its millionaire population since 2022, following significant wealth losses during the naira’s sharp depreciation in 2023 and 2024.

“The number of millionaires in the country is up from last year, which is positive. The rise over the past year is mainly due to the strength of the naira against the US dollar and solid new business growth,” Andrew Amoils, head of research at New World Wealth, said in an email to BusinessDay.

He added that the naira “has still performed very poorly over the full decade”, indicating that the latest increase represents only a partial recovery in Nigeria’s dollar wealth.

Stock market drives wealth gains

For Muda Yusuf, founder and chief executive officer of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, Nigeria’s stock market has been one of the biggest drivers of the increase.

“From the point of view of the stock market, most of these millionaires are coming from the stock market because of their position in the value of stocks,” Yusuf said.

He cautioned against interpreting the rise in millionaire numbers as evidence of a corresponding increase in Nigeria’s productivity.

“It is not so much about the fact that there has been any significant increase in productivity or output that has resulted in this increase. Most of it is coming through the stock market,” he said.

Yusuf said rising equity and property values, supported by inflows into the economy, had increased the value of assets held by wealthy Nigerians.

“It has to do more with asset acquisition, which is resulting from a lot of inflows into the economy, portfolio inflows in particular,” he said. “This is driving up value and making a lot of assets appreciate.”

Nigeria’s capital market has recorded strong gains since President Bola Tinubu took office in 2023, creating substantial wealth for existing investors.

Temi Popoola, group managing director and chief executive officer of Nigerian Exchange Group, recently estimated that reforms under the Tinubu administration had created between 500,000 and 900,000 naira millionaires through capital-market gains.

“Mr President, tied to all this is a lot of wealth that has been created for many people. We don’t have exact figures, but we estimate that about 500,000 to 900,000 millionaires have been created as a result of reforms,” he said.

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Popoola’s estimate is different from New World Wealth’s 8,100 figure because it refers to naira millionaires created through capital-market gains, rather than people with more than $1 million in liquid wealth.

The distinction is important: while New World Wealth’s figures capture Nigeria’s dollar-denominated wealthy population, Popoola’s estimate points to a much broader group of Nigerians whose wealth has increased through rising asset prices.

Financial services, telecoms support growth

The broader economy also provides some context for the sectors generating wealth.

Data from the latest National Bureau of Statistics GDP report show that the real GDP growth of the financial institutions sector slowed to 8.40 percent in the first quarter of 2026, from 15.91 percent in the same period of 2025.

Trade, which includes wholesale and retail activity, grew 2.08 percent, up from 1.78 percent a year earlier, while telecommunications expanded at a faster pace of 12.24 percent, compared with 7.82 percent in the first quarter of 2025.

Real estate growth, however, slowed to 2.29 percent from 4.61 percent, while arts, entertainment and recreation accelerated to 11.25 percent from 9.63 percent.

The performance of these sectors matters because they represent some of the main channels through which private wealth is accumulated — from bank and financial-market investments to telecommunications, property, retail businesses and the rapidly expanding creative economy.

Nigeria’s stock rally creates new wealth

Nigeria’s stock market has been a major contributor to the rise in asset values.

Popoola ranked the Nigerian market as the second-best performer among selected global markets in the first half of 2026, with a return of 57 percent.

South Korea’s KOSPI led with a 101 percent return, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 gained 39 percent. Kenya’s NSE, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index and the FTSE 100 returned 27 percent, 24 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

Popoola attributed Nigeria’s rally to the Investments and Securities Act 2025, foreign-exchange reforms, banking recapitalisation, stronger corporate earnings and higher dividends.

He said the performance represented more than rising share prices, describing it as a broad “re-rating of Nigeria” driven by returning investor confidence, deeper capital formation and improved corporate fundamentals.

For existing shareholders, that re-rating has translated into significant increases in the value of their holdings, creating another avenue through which Nigerians can move into higher wealth brackets.

Will millionaire wealth reach the wider economy?

The growth in the number of wealthy Nigerians could have wider implications for consumption, employment, investment and government revenue — but the size and nature of the wealth gains will determine how much of that benefit reaches the broader economy.

Abiodun Keripe, managing director at Afrinvest Consulting, said liquid wealth would naturally support higher spending.

“If we’re having new millionaires being created in the economy, and this wealth is liquid, by extension, the impact this should have on the economy would be, it would definitely support or drive consumption,” he said.

He pointed to spending on higher-quality lifestyles as an immediate channel through which wealth could filter into the wider economy.

New World Wealth also sees wealthy individuals playing a broader role in economic activity. Businesses founded by HNWIs can create well-paying jobs, while their equity investments can deepen local capital markets.

Their companies also generate corporate taxes, VAT and income taxes, while their spending supports sectors such as prime property, luxury hotels, fashion, fine dining and wealth management.

But Keripe cautioned that the relatively small number of dollar millionaires limits their immediate macroeconomic impact.

“8,100 out of how many millions of Nigerians do we have? It’s quite a small number,” he said.

Wealth creation versus inequality

The rapid increase in asset-based wealth also raises questions about how evenly Nigeria’s economic recovery is being distributed.

Yusuf said the concentration of wealth among asset owners could widen inequality if gains in equities and property are not accompanied by stronger income growth and productivity across the wider economy.

“I also see that, of course, this is increasing inequality in the economy. You can see that inequality is widening. More people are getting poorer while more people are getting richer,” he said.

That tension sits at the heart of Nigeria’s latest millionaire boom.

The country is creating substantial private wealth through financial markets, business activity, property and the creative economy. But much of the recent increase in wealth has also been driven by asset appreciation and currency effects, rather than a proportionate increase in productivity or output.

Nigeria now has 22 centi-millionaires — individuals worth more than $100 million — up from 20 a year earlier, while its three billionaires remained unchanged.

The country ranked fourth among Africa’s five largest wealth markets, behind South Africa, Egypt and Morocco and ahead of Kenya.

The significance of Nigeria’s 900 new dollar millionaires, therefore, will ultimately depend on whether their growing wealth remains concentrated in appreciating assets or is channelled into businesses, productive investment and consumption that create jobs and generate broader economic activity.

For now, the millionaire rebound is clear. The bigger question is whether Nigeria can turn rising private wealth into wider economic prosperity.