Forty percent of Nigerians live in poverty - stats office

By Alexis Akwagyiram
LAGOS, May 4 (Reuters) - Forty percent of people in Nigeria
live in poverty, figures published by the statistics office on
Monday showed, highlighting the low levels of wealth in a
country that has Africa's biggest economy.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in a report about
poverty and inequality from September 2018 to October 2019, said
40% of people in the continent's most populous country lived
below its poverty line of 137,430 naira ($381.75) per year. It
said that represents 82.9 million people.
Nigeria is the top oil exporter in Africa, which has helped
to create wealth related to crude sales that account for more
than half of government revenue. But a failure to diversify the
economy and build much needed transport and power infrastructure
has stymied growth and the spread of wealth beyond a rich elite.
Rapid population growth outstrips economic growth, which
stands at around 2%. The United Nations estimates that Nigeria
will have a population of 400 million by 2050.
Nigeria was already struggling to shake off the impact of a
2016 recession before the new coronavirus pandemic hit economies
worldwide.
"In Nigeria 40.1 percent of total population were classified
as poor. In other words, on average 4 out of 10 individuals in
Nigeria has real per capita expenditures below 137,430 Naira per
year," it said.
The statistics office said it did not include Borno, the
state worst hit by the decade-long Boko Haram insurgency,
because many areas there were not safe to reach.
A total of nearly 8 million people need humanitarian
assistance across Borno and two neighbouring states affected by
the insurgency, according to the United Nations.
The NBS said it had changed its methodology for its study,
so the figures could not be compared with previous reports on
the same subject covering 2003-2004 and 2009-2010.
"The 2019 study is accordingly treated as a base study and
any comparisons with previous poverty studies should be treated
with caution," stated the report.
The statistics office said 52% of people in rural areas live
in poverty, compared with 18% in urban parts of the country.
It said the highest poverty levels were in the northwestern
state of Sokoto, where 87.7% of people lived under the poverty
line compared with 4.5% in commercial hub Lagos state which had
the lowest rate.
($1 = 360.0000 naira)

(Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Ken Ferris)