Segun Amure
A data chart on Business Day has opposed President Muhammadu Buhari’s Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari claim that his administration has lifted 10.5m Nigerians out of poverty
According to the last poverty survey from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), no fewer than 40 percent of the Nigerian population, or almost 83 million people, live below the poverty line.
The NBS ‘2019 Poverty and Inequality in Nigeria’ report, which was based on data from the Nigerian Living Standards Survey conducted in 2018-2019 with support from the World Bank’s Poverty Global Practice, the nation’s poverty line was put at 137,430 naira ($381.75) per year.
In 2019, however, the World Poverty Clock put the number of people living in extreme poverty in Nigeria at 77.9 million or 39 per cent of the population, while the country’s total population stood at 199 million. By 2020, the number of people living in extreme poverty had jumped to 84.8 million, representing 41% of the population.
It would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday said that his government has lifted 10.5 million Nigerians out of poverty in the past two years.
President made this known in his June 12 Democracy broadcast and he also highlighted the successes of his administration and the challenges it faces.
His statement partly reads, “Our overall economic target of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years is our goal notwithstanding COVID-19.
“In the last two years we lifted 10.5 million people out of poverty – farmers, small-scale traders, artisans, market women and the like,” Mr Buhari said of the successes of his administration’s economic programmes.
“I am very convinced that this 100 million target can be met and this informed the development of a National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy. The specific details of this accelerated strategy will be unveiled shortly.”
