The World Poverty Clock estimates that approximately 70.92 million Nigerians live in extreme poverty.This amounts to 11% of the world’s extremely poor people. This implies that Nigeria is home to at least one in ten of the world’s most impoverished individuals.
Recall that in a previous report, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) stated that over 133 million Nigerians suffer from many forms of poverty.
During a one-day public lecture yesterday in Abuja, Professor Sulaiman Adesina Yusuf of the University of Ibadan’s Department of Agriculture Economics presented the statistics.
The Nigeria COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus (NG-CARES) program’s Federal Cares Unit organized the lecture. According to Yusuf, the guest speaker, Nigeria is ranked 109th out of 125 nations on the Global Hunger Index in 2023 and 163rd out of 191 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI) in 2021.
According to Yusuf, this is not only unsatisfactory for a nation that aspires to compete internationally, but it also warrants policymakers’ attention.
He acknowledged the efforts made by the nation’s past administrations to finance intervention programs, but stated that the main obstacle has been the government’s lack of political will to fully support the program.
The don demanded that the Social Protection Bill be passed in order to reallocate resources in a way that would increase social protection and to create political will for social protection at the federal and state levels.
Atiku Bagudu, the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, has already praised NG-CARES’s efforts to help pull Nigerians out of poverty. He said that because the current administration is so committed to reducing poverty, President Tinubu oversaw a comprehensive assessment of the country’s social security program a few weeks ago.
“As much as you may believe that we have made progress, much work still needs to be done,” he stated.
He pledged that the federal government would use all of its resources and authority to make sure that the depressing stories of poverty were put to rest.
