The world bank just announced only a third of Nigerians are poor!!! In a bizarre report quoted in a Thisday today it also mentioned that our unemployment rate is probably around 10% and not the 25% reported by the Bureau of Statistics. One wonders where they get these numbers from??
On Poverty
Going by the statistics released to journalists yesterday in Abuja by the World Bank, only 55.9 million Nigerians (about 33.1 per cent of the country’s population put at 169 million) are living below the acceptable poverty level, a significant improvement from the figure released last February by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which put the poverty level at 112.519 million (62.6 per cent). The World Bank also predicted a 7.4 per cent growth rate in the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The World Bank attributed the improvement in the poverty statistics to the positive economic trend as well as significant progress made towards poverty eradication in the country by the government. The poverty figure by the World Bank was drawn from its 2012/2013 poverty estimates while the one by the NBS was from the 2009/2010 estimates.
On Employment rate
The Bank also said an unofficial assessments using accepted International Labour Organisation (ILO) methodologies would suggest that the unemployment rate in Nigeria is less than 10 per cent compared to the 25 percent figure by the NBS.
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