FG report says 133 million Nigerians currently living in poverty

A Federal Government agency, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS in conjunction with some other bodies has said that 133 million Nigerians are currently living in poverty.

The NBS conducted the survey in collaboration with the National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).

According to the survey, the figure shows that 63 percent of its population living in abject poverty

Theadvocate.ng gathered that Nigeria’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) Survey was launched in Abuja on Thursday.

Nigerian President Mohammadu Buhari was represented by his chief of staff Prof. Ibrahim Gambari at the occasion.

Speaking on the development, President Buhari said the index was adopted because it provides ways poverty could be identified and tackled with government policies.

It was learnt that the indices used to calculate the poverty line in Nigeria were based on Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) with five components of health, living standard, education, security and unemployment.

The report said “over half of the population of Nigeria are multidimensionally poor and cook with dung, wood or charcoal, rather than cleaner energy. High deprivations are also apparent nationally in sanitation, time to healthcare, food insecurity, and housing.”

“In general, the incidence of monetary poverty is lower than the incidence of multidimensional poverty across most states. In Nigeria, 40.1% of people are poor according to the 2018/19 national monetary poverty line, and 63% are multidimensionally poor according to the National MPI 2022.”

The survey, which sampled over 56,000 households across the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT, conducted between November 2021 and February 2022, states that 65 per cent of the poor, 86 million people, live in the North, while 35 percent, nearly 47 million live in the South.

The survey shows that Sokoto State as having the most poverty levels across states, with 91 percent while Ondo has the lowest with 27 percent.