Abstract: Democratic transition without a viable economic foundation cannot be sustained. Nigeria�s emerging democracy is faced with the challenges of meeting the welfare aspirations of the citizenry. Economic downturn, leadership insensitivity and indifference have constrained good governance and provision of dividends of democracy to the electorates. The nation suffers weak public and private sectors and poor macro-economic environment. Attempts at revamping the economy through liberalized policy reforms have become contradictory and paradoxical in the sense that they have enhanced the poverty and hardship level of the citizenry and the gradual elimination of the middle class. Consequently, mass discontentment against the regime is growing. The generality of the people are increasingly developing a sort of lack of psychological resistance against any attempts at a return to military governance. The problematique, therefore, is that can the emerging democracy survive in a situation of deepening material poverty and without economic empowerment of the people?