Over 91m Nigerians Now Desperately Poor, Says World Poverty Clock

 

The number of extremely poor Nigerians has risen to 91.6 million, according to the World Poverty Clock.

This implies that virtually half of Nigeria’s population now lives in extreme poverty.

The World Poverty Clock had named Nigeria the poverty capital of the world last June when it revealed that Nigeria had 87 million people living in poverty.

The latest figure shows that an additional four million Nigerians have since fallen under the poverty line.

The report added that six Nigerians become poor every minute.

The World Poverty Clock is a tool to monitor progress against poverty globally.

It uses publicly available data on income distribution, production, and consumption provided by various international organisations, most notably the United Nations, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

According to the World Poverty Clock, which was created by Vienna-based World Data Lab, 91.16 million Nigerians were living below a dollar a day as of February 13, 2019.

The World Bank said a person can be said to be living in extreme poverty if they live below the poverty line of $1.90 which translates to N693.5 per day.

The President Muhammadu Buhari government had last year rejected the report, insisting that it had created jobs especially in the area of agriculture, and reduced poverty.

However, British Prime Minister, Theresa May, reiterated the statistics during her visit to Nigeria last year.