The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics say that 40% representing 82.9 million Nigerians are poor. This is contained in a report released on Monday.
This number exclude households from Borno, a state ravaged by the activities of Boko Haram. The survey covered only households from “accessible” (safe to visit, areas only).
According to the report, the NBS together with the World Bank estimated poverty using expenditure approach as against the income approach as well as Nigerian Living Standards Survey.
The survey measured poverty and living standards between September of 2018 and October of 2019. The outcome is that those that spend below 137,430 Naira per year are considered poor. This translate to N376.5 per day
The report says that, on average 4 out of 10 individuals in Nigeria has real per capita expenditures below 137,430 Naira per year .
Out of the figure, 52.10 per cent of are of rural dwellers while the poverty rate in urban centres is 18.04 per cent.
On State level, Sokoto occupy the highest of 87.73 percent in the poverty headcount rate followed by Taraba and Jigawa with 87.72 percent and 87.02 percent respectively.
In January, the world Bank released a report that the North accounted for 87 per cent of all the poor people in Nigeria in 2016 as published by Punch.
The World Bank observed that although Nigeria was a richly endowed country, it had a larger proportion of the world’s extreme poor than any other nation.
Nigeria is the biggest oil exporter in Africa. The country depend majorly on revenue from the crude with frequent fluctuating prices.
With the current COVID-19 pandemic and fallen oil prices, the poverty rate is expected to be higher than it currently stand
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