More than 10 million Nigerians have fallen into poverty in the last eight years, according to data obtained by BusinessDay.
The All Progressives Congress has been in power since May 29, 2015, when Muhammadu Buhari took office after he became the first to oust an incumbent in an election. Eight years later, he handed over to Bola Tinubu, who was the party’s candidate in the 2023 presidential election.
Between 2016 and 2023, an additional 10.41 million Nigerians became poor, according to World Poverty Clock.
The World Bank said in its latest Nigeria Development Update report that four million Nigerians fell into poverty within the first five months of 2023.
In 2021, President Buhari established the Steering Committee of the National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy with the goal of uplifting 100 million Nigerians from poverty within a decade.
Read also:Inflation pushes additional 4m Nigerians into poverty – World Bank
Last year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said about 133 million Nigerians were suffering from multidimensional poverty.
The country has suffered two recessions in the last seven years, first in 2016 and then in 2020.
Nigeria’s unemployment rose to 33 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020 from 21.8 percent in the first quarter of 2018, according to the NBS.
“Inflation pushed an estimated four million more Nigerians into poverty in the first five months of 2023, and average prices of locally produced staples have increased faster than average inflation,” the World Bank said last week.
