No fewer than 133 million people representing 63 per cent of over 200 million Nigerians are living below poverty line, the Federal Government has declared.
The figure was presented during the launch of the Poverty Index (MPI) Survey yesterday in Abuja based on a survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), 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).
The survey, which sampled over 56,000 households across the 36 States of the Federation and the FCT, was conducted between November 2021 and February 2022.
It was discovered that 65 per cent of the poor, amounting to 86 million people, live in the North while 35 per cent, nearly 47 million live in the South.
According to the report: “Over half of the population of Nigeria are multidimensionally poor and cook with dung, wood or charcoal, rather than clean energy. High deprivations are also apparent nationally in sanitation, time to healthcare, food insecurity, and housing.”
Putting a further perspective on it, the report said: “In general, the incidence of monetary poverty is lower than the incidence of multidimensional poverty across most states.”
It said the North West has the highest number of people in poverty with 45.49m followed by North East 20.47m, North Central 20.19m, South South 19.66m, South West 16.27m and South East 10.85m.
n state profile, it said Kano has the highest number with 10.51m while the least is Abia with 1.12m people.
The report, which included the Child MPI stated that two-thirds 67.5 per cent of children (0–17) are multidimensionally poor and half, 51 per cent, of all poor people are children.
It added that the highest deprivations are in the indicator of child engagement, where over half of the poor children lack the intellectual stimulation pivotal to early childhood development.
