Monday 4 May 2020

More Than 82.9 Million Nigerians Are Living In Poverty - National Bureau Of Statistics (NBS)

In yet more grim milestone for Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says about 82.9 million Nigerians are living in poverty.

This was contained in the 2019 Poverty & Inequality in Nigeria report by the NBS, saying the figure represents 40.09% of the country’s population.

The report posits that 52.10% of rural population are living in poverty while the poverty rate in urban centres is 18.04%.

This however represents an improvement from the last poverty data released by the NBS in 2010 which claimed 60.9% of the population was living in poverty. Nigeria’s population at the time was put at 112.4 million, translating to 68.4 million people living in poverty.
 


The NBS, together with the World Bank, used the Nigerian living standards survey (NLSS) to measure poverty and living standards between September of 2018 and October of 2019.

For the study, the NLSS measured poverty using the consumption expenditure rather than income.

The data, however, excludes Borno State, which is still reeling from the ravaged of Boko Haram insurgents.

Last year, Nigeria overtook India as the poverty capital of the world with over 90 million Nigerians living below the poverty line.

A recession in 2016 – Nigeria’s first in 25 years – and the present downturn occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic – have had an overall devastating effect on the livelihood of many Nigerians.

The country has also been rocked by incessant killings by so-called herdsmen, dealing a crippling blow to farming in rural communities.

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