The states of Sokoto, Taraba and Jigawa have the highest number of Nigeria’s poor people with each recording  87.73, 87.72 and 87.02 per cent respectively according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The Statistics Bureau in a report released Monday (May 4, 2020), entitled “2019 Poverty and Inequality in Nigeria”, disclosed that Nigeria had 82.9 million poor people as of 2019 representing 40.1 per cent of the country’s population (estimated over 200 million).

The exact population figures of the states were not stated as the NBS said it would provide full details of the report at a later date.

The report however disclosed that the figures were derived from the Nigerian Living Standards Survey (NLSS) conducted by the NBS between September of 2018 and October of 2019 after a decade, adding that the report excludes Borno State.

”In Nigeria 40.1 percent of total population were classified as poor. In other words, on average 4 out of 10 individuals in Nigeria have real per capita expenditures below 137,430 Naira per year. This translates to over 82.9 million Nigerians who are considered poor by national standards.

“It is important to note, that this number excludes the state of Borno. While the NLSS 2018-19 includes households from Borno, that sample was not representative of the whole state since only households from “accessible” (safe to visit, areas only) were interviewed. Thus, the Borno sample is  considered non-random and non-representative,” the report stated.

Lagos, Delta and Osun had the lowest figures constituting 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 per cent respectively.

Giving more insight on the report, the NBS explained that the survey data include “household and individual demographics (age, gender, marital status, among others), access to  education, health and basic services, employment, assets, and income”,

It said the survey  was  used to  measure prevalence of poverty and to estimate a wide range of socio-economic indicators  including benchmarking of the Sustainable Development Goals,  giving further insight on the methodology of the survey.

The national poverty line is “calculated by adding food poverty line and cost of non-food basic needs. This results in value of poverty line equal to 137,430 Naira per person per year. The implication of this value is as follows: the individuals living in households whose per capita annual consumption expenditures is below 137,430 Naira are considered poor by national standards.”

The NBS said that the innovations adopted in constructing the NLSS 2018-19 survey rendered the report incomparable relative to any preceding or previous reports. “The 2019 study is accordingly treated as a base study  and any comparisons with previous poverty studies should be treated with caution”, the Statistics Bureau said.