Nigerians Living in Poverty Will Hit 95.1 Million This Year, Says World Bank
- Over 90 million more Nigerians will fall below the poverty line in 2022, according to data by the World Bank
- The bank said that the country's poverty reduction index stalled in 2015, the year President Buhari came to power
- According to the bank, Nigeria has negative per capita GDP which has stopped improving in the last 7 years
The epitaph given to Nigeria as the world poverty capital may not go away any time soon as a recent report by the World Bank indicates that over 95 million Nigerians will fall below the poverty line.
According to the World Bank, Nigeria’s poverty reduction index peaked in 2015, when Buhari became president as more Nigerians are going below the poverty threshold.
Source: Getty Images
The Punch reports the global finance body stressed that the number of poor Nigerians is expected to hit a milestone of 95.1 million.
Prediction of doom
The bank said that poverty reduction appears to have stopped in the last decade, according to both back-casting and survey-to-survey input techniques.
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Worsened by COVID-19 pandemic
According to the report, the COVID-19 pandemic threw over 5 million Nigerians into poverty this year.
It stated that over 90 million Nigerians are going to become poorer by the end of 2022.
BusinessDay report said that the COVID-19 pandemic is driving Nigeria’s poverty rate to an all-time high and will push about 5 million more into poverty by the end of this year. With a negative per capita GDP growth in all sectors of the economy this year, poverty is expected to deepen above the current threshold.
In 2018, Brookings Institute named Nigeria as the poverty capital of the world, saying about 88 million are living in abject poverty, which is below $1.90 per day as at then.
Nigeria shot to the top of the poverty index after overtaking India as the world poverty capital, according to TheCable.
In just 2018, 1.1 million Nigerians slipped into poverty within four months.
World Bank list to FG urgent actions needed to stop Poverty from getting worse
Legit.ng has reported that World Bank has declared that four out of every 10 Nigerians are poor and there is a need for long-term reforms to foster and sustain pro-poor growth and raise citizens out of poverty.
The Bank stated this in its latest report titled, ‘A Better Future for All Nigerians: Nigeria Poverty Assessment 2022’.
Other reforms included trade, and exchange rate policy; policies to boost the productivity of the farm and non-farm household enterprises among others.
Source: Legit.ng
