The federal government of Nigeria has disclosed that 133 million Nigerians are living in poverty. This represents 63 per cent of the over 200 million people in the country.
Daily Trust reports that the measure used to calculate the figure was the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which has four components: health, living standards, education, security, and unemployment.
Previously, the measures used to determine the country’s poverty were through the monetary poverty indices, which calculate the number of people living below the US dollar.
Daily Trust reports that insecurity occasioned by Boko Haram in the North East, banditry in the North West, the farmers/herders crisis in North Central, insurrection in the South East, oil bunkering and militancy in the South South, and sundry crimes in the South West have collectively stunted socioeconomic activities in Nigeria.
Also, the coming of COVID-19 and other challenges have affected millions of people even though the country has been struggling for decades to take millions of children off the streets and back to school.
The figure was presented during yesterday’s launch of the Poverty Index (MPI) Survey in Abuja. The survey was conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
The survey, which sampled over 56,000 households across the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT between November 2021 and February 2022, stated that 65 percent of the poor, 86 million people, live in the North, while 35 percent, nearly 47 million, live in the South.
The report said, “Over half of the population of Nigeria is multidimensionally poor and cooks with dung, wood or charcoal rather than clean energy. High deprivations are also apparent nationally in sanitation, time to healthcare, food insecurity, and housing.”
Putting a further perspective on it, the report said, “In general, the incidence of monetary poverty is lower than the incidence of multidimensional poverty across most states.”
It identified Sokoto State as having the highest poverty level among states, with 91 percent, while Ondo has the lowest, with 27 percent.
It said the North West has the highest number of people in poverty, with 45.49m, followed by the North East, 20.47m, North Central, 20.19m, South South, 19.66m, South West, 16.27m, and South East, 10.85m.
On the state profile, it said Kano has the highest number with 10.51m while the least is Abia with 1.12m people.
The report, which included the Child MPI stated that two-thirds 67.5 per cent of children (0–17) are multidimensionally poor and half, 51 per cent, of all poor people are children.
It added that the highest deprivations are in the indicator of child engagement, where over half of the poor children lack the intellectual stimulation pivotal to early childhood development.
“Child poverty is prevalent in rural areas, with almost 90% of rural children experiencing poverty. Across the geo-political zones, the child MPI shows higher poverty in the North-East and North-West (where 90% of children are poor) and lower poverty in the South-East and South-West (74% and 65.1% respectively). The incidence of Child MPI is above 50% in all States and greater than 95% in Bayelsa, Sokoto, Gombe and Kebbi.
In Nigeria, 40.1% of people are poor according to the 2018/19 national monetary poverty line, and 63% are multidimensionally poor according to the National MPI 2022.”
