133 million Nigerians live in poverty
The Federal Government has revealed that around 63% of people in Nigeria (133 million) live in poverty.
This is based on research conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the National Social Safety Nets Coordination Office (NASSCO), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Childhood (UNICEF) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
While presenting a report at the launch of Nigeria’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) survey in Abuja on Thursday, November 17, it was revealed that the figure was obtained after a Multidimensional Poverty Index (IPM) with five components of health, standard of living, education, security and unemployment were measured.
56,000 households in the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT were sampled in the research conducted between November 2021 and February 2022.
Of the 133 million Nigerians living in poverty, 86 million people live in the North, while 35%, nearly 47 million live in the South.
Sokoto State had the highest poverty level among the states, at 91%, while Ondo has the lowest at 27%.
The report added;
“More than half of Nigeria’s population is multidimensionally poor and cooks with dung, wood or charcoal, rather than cleaner energy. High deprivations are also apparent nationally in sanitation, time for health care, food insecurity and housing.
“In general, the incidence of income poverty is lower than the incidence of multidimensional poverty in most states. In Nigeria, 40.1% of people are poor according to the National Monetary Poverty Line 2018/19, and 63% are multidimensionally poor according to the National MPI 2022.”
President Muhammadu Buhari, who was represented at the event by his chief of staff, Ibrahim Gambari, said the index was embraced because it provides ways to identify poverty and tackle it with policies.
