133mn Out Of 211.4m Nigerians Are Poor, Says NBS
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday painted a scary picture of the standards of living in Nigeria, revealing that over 133 million of the country’s 211.4 million population are multi-dimensionally poor, representing 63 per cent of persons living within the country.
The figure is the highlight of the 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) survey by the Bureau, 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)which sampled over 56,000 households across the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT between November 2021 and February 2022. It also provides multidimensional poverty estimates at the senatorial district level.
The MPI survey shows 65 per cent of the poor (86 million people) live in the North, while 35 per cent (nearly 47 million) live in the South. Poverty levels across the 36 states vary significantly, with the incidence of multidimensional poverty ranging from a low of 27 per cent in Ondo to a high of 91 per cent in Sokoto.
The report further stated that over half of the population of Nigeria are multidimensionally poor and cook with dung, wood, or charcoal, rather than cleaner energy, adding that deprivations also appeared 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 per cent of people are poor according to the 2018/19 national monetary poverty line, and 63 per cent are multidimensionally poor according to the National MPI 2022.
“Multidimensional poverty is higher in rural areas, where 72 per cent of people are poor, compared to 42 per cent of people in urban areas. The National MPI is reported with a linked Child MPI, which provides additional information on Multidimensional Child Poverty in Nigeria”, the report noted.
According to the report, two-thirds (67.5 per cent+) of children (0–17) are multidimensionally poor according to the National MPI, and a half (51 per cent) of all poor people are children.
The highest deprivations are in the indicator of child engagements – where over half of the poor children lack the intellectual stimulation that is pivotal to early childhood development.
It said, “child poverty is prevalent in rural areas, with almost 90 per cent of rural children experiencing poverty. Across the geo-political zones, the child MPI shows higher poverty in the North-East and North-West (where 90% of children are poor) and lower poverty in the South-East and South-West (74 per cent and 65.1 per cent respectively).
“The incidence of Child MPI is above 50 per cent in all States and greater than 95 per cent in Bayelsa, Sokoto, Gombe, and Kebbi.
Four million Nigerians – 2.1 per cent of the population – live with a child aged 15–17 who is the first generation in that household to have completed primary school”.
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