Stress-Testing Global Risk Scenarios: A Critical Futures Assessment of Five Universal Models Using Nigeria as a Case

Abstract

This article subjects five global risk scenarios — drawn from the author’s cascading-risks research program — to a place-based stress test using Nigeria as a critical case. Rather than forecasting Nigeria’s future, the analysis interrogates these scenarios as methodological artifacts: what assumptions about agency, shock propagation, and institutional capacity do they embed, and where do those assumptions fail? Using an evidence-to-scenario protocol adapted from PRISMA-inspired review methodology, scenario claims are linked to auditable empirical anchors across six domains — governance, demography, economy, climate, technology, and migration — and a critical futures rubric is applied to each scenario. The analysis reveals recurring methodological limitations: linear impact narratives, passive-periphery assumptions, and technology-centered causality that systematically under-specify the informal institutions and social cohesion dynamics that drive adaptive capacity in heterogeneous contexts. The contribution is methodological: a replicable framework for interrogating the worldview commitments embedded in globally-oriented scenarios before they are applied across heterogeneous contexts. The article concludes with a constructive proposal for epistemically pluralist scenario design drawing on African futures scholarship and indigenous forecasting traditions.