‘105 million Nigerians now live in extreme poverty’
By Fredrick Wright
More Nigerians have been plunged into extreme poverty since November 2019, according to the latest report by World Poverty Clock.
The latest figure shows that over 105 million Nigerians now live in extreme poverty – from 98 million in October 2019. The figures represent 51% of the population.
The figure by World Poverty Clock, however, contradicts the latest figures on poverty released by Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
NBS in May 2020 released its 2019 report on “Poverty and Inequality in Nigeria” and put the figure of Nigerians living in extreme poverty at 89.2 million. This represents 40.1 percent of Nigeria’s population.
Nigeria, according to the World Poverty Clock, has a total population of 205,323,520 people with 105,097,856 in extreme poverty representing 51 per cent of the population.
An individual is classified as living in extreme poverty if the person earns below $1.90 or N855 a day.
The data further shows that there are more Nigerian males are in extreme poverty compared to their female counterparts.
About 53,133,553 million men are living below the poverty threshold, while women are 51,564,303.
The data showed that the standard rate of escape from poverty is 0.3 people per second but Nigeria falls short of – with -4.4 people escaping poverty per second.
Nigeria remains the poverty capital in the world in terms of the number of people but is below other countries in poverty in percentages. Niger has 72% of its population in extreme poverty, Madagascar has 77%, the Democratic Republic of Congo has 75%, Central African republican has 79%, while South Sudan has 80% of its population in extreme poverty.
