More Than 105m Nigerians Now Living in Abject Poverty

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

• Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, in a report it released in May, put the figure of Nigerians living in extreme poverty at 89.2 million
• Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed had also said that no government in the country’s history has alleviated poverty like the Buhari-led administration, citing the government’s N-Power, Trader Moni, Farmer Moni, Market Moni as programmes targetted at lifting Nigerians out of poverty

In its latest report, the World Poverty Clock has shown that more Nigerians have been plunged into extreme poverty since November 2019.

The latest figure shows that over 105 million Nigerians now live in extreme poverty – from 98 million in October 2019.

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.

Read also: Buhari’s New Development Plan To Lift 100m Nigeians Out Of Poverty

The data further shows that there are more Nigerian males 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.