President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has confirmed Sokoto State as the most poorest of all states in Nigeria.
The federal government on Thursday (today) noted that the Northwest state currently has a 91 per cent poverty record level while Ondo has the lowest with 27 per cent.
This is as it confirms that 133 million Nigerians are currently living in poverty. OsunDaily News understands that the figure was presented during the launch of Nigeria’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) Survey in Abuja on Thursday, November 17, 2022.
The event was organized by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
The figures, according to reports, are measured based on the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) with five components: health, living standard, education, security and unemployment.
The survey, which sampled over 56,000 households across the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT, conducted between November 2021 and February 2022, states that 65 per cent of the poor, 86 million people, live in the North, while 35 per cent, nearly 47 million live in the South.
Represented at the event by his Chief of Staff, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, President Buhari said the index was adopted because it provides ways poverty could be identified and tackled with policies.
“Over half of the population of Nigeria are multidimensionally poor and cook with dung, wood or charcoal, rather than cleaner energy. High deprivations are also apparent nationally in sanitation, time to healthcare, food insecurity, and housing.
“In general, the incidence of monetary poverty is lower than the incidence of multidimensional poverty across most states. In Nigeria, 40.1% of people are poor according to the 2018/19 national monetary poverty line, and 63% are multidimensionally poor according to the National MPI 2022,” he said.
