SHOCKER:
90 million Nigerians live in Abject Poverty-Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics
… ‘91 million Nigerians now live below poverty line’, says Nigerian Economic Summit Group
*‘An additional one million people were pushed into poverty in Nigeria between June and November 2021, resulting in a total of about 8 million people being relinquished to poverty in 2021’-World BANK
*BY GEORGE ELIJAH OTUMU/AMERICAN Senior Investigative Editor
THERE ARE FEARS that going by the economic situation in Africa’s most populous black nation, hunger and poverty are becoming worse and many more Nigerians are living below poverty line. As at today, 90 to 91 million Nigerians are living in abject poverty. This sad circumstance was confirmed by the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics, Nigerian Economic Summit Group and World Bank.
The Nigerian Economic Summit Group, NESG says 91 million Nigerians now live below the poverty line. The Chairman of the Group, Asue Ighodalo, disclosed this, yesterday, at the launching of the 2022 Macro-Economic Outlook of the Group, in Abuja.
His words, “The World Bank estimates that an additional one million people were pushed into poverty in Nigeria between June and November 2021, resulting in a total of about 8 million people being relinquished to poverty in 2021 and bringing our nation’s poverty headcount to about 91 million.
“That is 91 million Nigerians afflicted by the ‘poverty virus’, which is every bit as deadly and more infectious than SARS COVID-19, judging by the numbers.”
With campaigns for the 2023 general elections beginning to manifest, across the country, the NESG boss lamented that the economic gains, so far recorded, could be easily eroded, especially if the government focused on politicking than governance.
According to him, ‘‘the current administration must strive to leave behind a positive , long lasting legacy, saying that the government still has the time, if it has the will, to create a solid foundation, and catalytic growth base for this country; and must continue to work hard to deal decisively with the challenges of poverty, unemployment, insecurity, social cohesion and macroeconomic instability.’
‘‘We believe that policies that directly impact the welfare, gainful employment and safety of our citizens and the performance, sustainability and job-creating potentials of our businesses, in the short term, must be at the forefront of government policies and actions in 2022.
‘‘Being a pre-election year, the group feared that 2022 will likely come with increased election spending, which could motivate a tighter monetary policy stance to curb inflationary pressures.
‘‘Secondly, it envisaged that attention may shift from effective governance to outright politicking with the pace of decision-making usually slows down in a pre-election year and reform pronouncements and implementation becoming difficult.,’’
Come 2023, Mr. Ighodalo advised the electorate to vote for a presidential candidate with a track record and a reformer who would drive the nation’s economic growth.
‘‘We must only reward with our votes those parties that put forward knowledgeable reformers; reformers who are creative, passionate, courageous and have shown with evidence of their life’s work, a genuine love for the people of Nigeria.
“At this time in our country’s trajectory, we cannot afford to be delinquent in this most basic civic responsibility. The cost of getting it wrong in 2023 is more than this great nation can or should bear,” he said.
The NESG in the outlook noted that the challenge of foreign exchange availability persists and urged both monetary and fiscal authorities to take steps to boost inflow, especially, with the commencement of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The group advised the government to ensure “effective border control; removing capital controls and encouraging the inflow of stable investments; prioritizing non-oil forex sources; enhancing the quality of import substitutes and the fixing of local refineries and constructing of new ones.”
On the vexed issue of fuel subsidy removal, the outlook noted that fuel subsidy was conceived initially as “a short-term support tool, has endured over time, thereby becoming a threat to fiscal sustainability”.
The NESG said that the removal of petrol subsidy “will come at a cost,” as “ Tough reforms are costly and the cost of inactions is also enormous”.
The Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics said in 2020 that 40% or 83 million Nigerians live in poverty. Although Nigeria’s poverty profile for 2021 has not yet been released, it is estimated that the number of poor people will increase to 90 million, or 45% of the population, in 2022.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently released the “2019 Poverty and Inequality in Nigeria” report, which highlights that 40 percent of the total population, or almost 83 million people, live below the country’s poverty line of 137,430 naira ($381.75) per year.
The NBS report is based on data from the latest round of the Nigerian Living Standards Survey, conducted in 2018-2019 with support from the World Bank’s Poverty Global Practice and technical assistance from the LSMS program.
The Nigerian Living Standards Survey (NLSS) is the official survey that is the basis for measuring poverty and living standards in the country and is used to estimate a wide range of socio-economic indicators including benchmarking of the Sustainable Development Goals. Between September of 2018 and October of 2019, the National Bureau of Statistics conducted the latest round of the NLSS, a decade after the previous one.
The World Bank provided technical support to the NBS throughout the entire survey implementation, introducing several methodological improvements that led to the availability of reliable data for the poverty estimates.
The World Bank says the general increase in food prices which occurred between June 2020 and June 2021 may have increased the percentage of Nigerians living below the national poverty line from 40.1 per cent to 42.8 per cent.
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