The latest Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report on Nigeria, released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) this November, shows the country has a higher incidence of poor people but less intensity of deprivation, even though the report measured more indicators of poverty than in the past.
Considering 15 indicators, instead of the 10 indicators in the past 2 surveys, it was determined that at least 133 million Nigerians, a 63% of the country’s population, suffer from multidimensional poverty.
Furthermore, the 2022 MPI report noted that the extent of the deprivations that these 113 million poor people suffer is at an average of 40.9%.
However, Dataphyte Research, in its trend analysis of the global multidimensional poverty situation, observed that the amount of deprivation that poor people experience in Nigeria reduced significantly from 55.9% in 2013 to 54.8% in 2018 and further down to 40.9% in 2022.
Also, with a 2022 MPI score of 0.257 (or 25.7%), these 133 million poor Nigerians “experience deprivations in more than one dimension, or in at least 26% of weighted indicators.” This MPI score is lower than that of 2013 and slightly higher than the 2018 MPI.
Prequel to this, the World Bank measured Nigeria’s monetary poverty rate and projected that 42.6% of Nigerians currently live below the National poverty line of N137,430 per year (or N376.50 per day), a worse situation compared to 40.1% of the population for the country in 2018.
However, Dataphyte Research observed severally in its reports that while monetary poverty, measured at the national poverty line of N377 per day, is projected to increase in Nigeria, the World Bank had reported a consistent decline in poverty measured at the international poverty line of $2.15 per day (or N953 per day going by the official exchange rate of N443.26/dollar as of 26th November 2022).
Also, the World Bank reported that income inequality decreased from 35.9 Gini Index point in 2015 to 35.1 in 2018. Income inequality has not increased in Nigeria since 2018 till date, as the 2022 World Inequality Report (WIR) recorded a Gini coefficient of 35.1 for 2022.
Thus, both multidimensional poverty and monetary poverty share a similar paradox in Nigeria, and the import of this is that the government supervises a system that makes more people poor and then gets itself busy all year alleviating that poverty.
The higher incidence of multidimensionally poor people in Nigeria in 2022 shows that the government allowed about 16.5% out of the 19.2% vulnerable people in 2020 to fall into the poverty trap by 2022. This increased the 46.4% poverty incidence in 2020 to 62.9% in 2022.
Regardless, these 113 million poor people (or 62.9% of Nigeria’s population) struggled not to fall further into severe poverty. Hence, the lower aggregate poverty severity or intensity of 40.9% in 2022.