20 Million More Nigerians To Become Poor In 2022

Posted by Nwa Diokpa African News, Featured, Latest Headlines, News, News Across Nigeria, News From The State Saturday, December 12th, 2020

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The World Bank has projected that the number of poor people in Nigeria will increase by 20 million by 2022.

According to the bank’s Nigeria Development Update (NDU), an average Nigerian may experience setback due to setbacks of decades of economic growth and Nigeria could enter its deepest recession since the 1980s.

Shubham Chaudhuri, the bank’s country director for Nigeria, said: “Nigeria is at a critical historical juncture, with a choice to make. Nigeria can choose to break decisively from business-as-usual, and rise to its considerable potential by sustaining the bold reforms that have been taken thus far and going even further and with an even greater sense of urgency to promote faster and more inclusive economic growth.”

According to the figures from the 2019 poverty and inequality in Nigeria report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which indicated that 40 percent of the total population, or almost 83 million Nigerians, are living below the poverty line of N137,430 per year.

The World Bank in its update cautioned that the economy may shrink up to 4 percent in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the reduction in the price of oil stress

sing that food insecurity has increased while “economic precarity is on the rise because unemployed workers have migrated to the low-productivity agricultural sector”

Marco Hernandez, World Bank’s lead economist for Nigeria, said: “Nigeria can build on its reform momentum to contain the spread of COVID-19, stimulate the economy, and enable the private sector to be the engine of growth and job creation.

It can also redirect public spending from subsidies that benefit the rich towards investments in Nigeria’s people and youth in particular, and lay foundations for a strong recovery to help make progress towards lifting 100 million people out of poverty.”

The Bank stated that the Nigerian government should continue to manage the internal spread of COVID-19 until a vaccine becomes available for distribution.