133 million Nigerians remain multidimensionally poor in 2022 - NBS

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says it will begin the zonal dissemination of its MPI report in January 2023.

Semiu Adeniran, statistician-general of the federation and NBS chief executive officer, announced this at the second Bi-National Consultative Committee of Statistics (NCCS) on Wednesday in Lagos.

Highlights of the 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index survey by NBS reveal that 63 per cent of persons living in Nigeria (133 million people) are multidimensionally poor. The national MPI is 0.257, indicating that poor people in Nigeria experience just over one-quarter of all possible deprivations.

The statistician-general said the bureau’s MPI report included the Nigerian Living Standard Survey (NLSS) and the Nigerian Labour Force Survey (NLFS), which, together with World Bank, would provide detailed household information and insights into labour and welfare conditions in the country.

According to him, NLSS will provide detailed information on household consumption, education, health, employment, housing conditions, assets, household enterprise and other key non-monetary indicators of welfare.

On the other hand, he said the NLFS was a strategic survey designed to collect and analyse labour market statistics for the country, including the generally understood and widely anticipated headline unemployment and underemployment rates.

“While the unemployment and underemployment rates are very important figures that indicate the number of persons economically engaged, the NLFS also contains a lot more equally interesting and important information that offer useful insight into the health of the labour market in Nigeria,” the NBS boss explained.

Adeniran said under the process, each state’s results in the respective zones would be presented in more detail, including the methodology and computation process explained further and that the impact of inflation on households and businesses both within and outside the country could not be ignored.

“You only need to listen to some of the numbers and headlines emanating from some African nations and beyond to fully understand the severity of the global situation we are facing. In Ghana, Ethiopia and Rwanda, inflation for the month of October was reported at 40.4 per cent, 31.7 per cent, and 31 per cent, respectively,” the statistician-general noted. “Countries in the West are also reporting record inflation figures, with the UK recording its highest rate of 11.1 per cent since 1981, a high of 40 years.”