Nigerians have kicked against President Muhammadu Buhari’s claim that his administration has lifted about 10.5million Nigerians out of poverty.
Analysts and economic observers, who spoke with our correspondent, said available data do not justify Buhari’s claim.
President Buhari, on Saturday, claimed that his administration had greatly improved the lives of over 10million poor Nigerians in the last two years.
He made this claim during his June 12 Democracy day address, saying interventions made by the Central Bank of Nigeria targeted at agricultural services, infrastructure, power and health care sectors of the economy had seen appreciable.
He said various interventionist programmes by his administration had put the economy on the path of sustainable economic growth.
But a renowned Economist, Mr. Emmanuel Ugwu, said from 2018 to 2020, unemployment rose from 18.8 per cent to 27.1 per cent and then to 33 per cent, according to the NBS, which concluded that more joblessness resulted in more people in the extreme poverty cycle.
He noted that the exchange rate has risen from N307/$ in 2019 to N410/$ in 2021.
He said, “Weakening local currency makes products expensive and reduces incomes. It consequently increases the number of poor people.
“The exchange rate has weakened 34 per cent in two years, demonstrating that more Nigerians have jumped into extreme poverty.”
Another economic expert, Mr. Afolabi Adekoya, said, Nigeria may be the largest economy of the African content, but the average Nigerian is more miserable than many citizens of other countries in the continent.
According to him, the misery index is calculated by adding a country’s inflation and unemployment rates, among others, saying, “Nigeria’s inflation rate is over 18 per cent and the country’s joblessness is rising, fuelling misery among the population.”
The analysts warned that a holistic approach to tackling poverty should have a national policy appeal and feed into the national budget, the government’s planning and other policies of the government.
President Buhari had claimed that “In the last two years, “we have lifted 10.5 million people out of poverty -farmers, small-scale traders, artisans, market women and the like.
“I am very convinced that this 100 million target can be met and this informed the development of a National Poverty Reduction Programme Pwith growth strategy. The specific detail of this accelerated strategy will be unveiled shortly.”
But available data have shown that many Nigerians still live in extreme poverty in the last two years( 2018 or 2019 to 2020 or 2021), despite interventionist efforts by the government.
About 87 million Nigerians lived in extreme poverty in 2017, said World Poverty Clock.
According to the World Poverty Clock, the number rose in 2019. Nigeria had a total population of 205.32 million in 2019, with 105.097 million living in extreme poverty, representing 51 per cent of the population. This means the number of extremely poor people rose from 87 million to 105 million in two years.
An individual is classified as living in extreme poverty if the person earns below $1.90 per day.
The National Bureau of Statistics said in a 2020 report, covering September 2018 to October 2019, that 40 per cent of people in the country lived below poverty line of N137,430 ($381.75) a year, representing 82.9 million people.
The NBS did not say that the number of poor Nigerians fell in 2020. It rather said that 67 per cent of household incomes fell by August 2020, as against 2019. This meant more people thrown into poverty.
A 2021 report by Alexander Irwin, Jonathan Lain and Tara Vishwanath, published on World Bank blog, noted that more Nigerians had been pushed into poverty by COVID-19 – even with all the interventions by government.
Contrary to Buhari’s claim on economic growth path, growth in the last five years has been less than two percent – less than 2 6 per cent of population growth- meaning more poverty for Africa’s most populous nation.
Recession has occurred in the last two years with the economy exiting in the last quarter of 2020.
However, growth was just 0.11 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2020 and 0.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2021.
The situation means that more people are not out of poverty due to lack of growth in the economy.