THE National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says its recent survey has revealed that 42 percent of Nigerians lost their job due to the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
The NBS said the impact of COVID-19 on employment and income have been widespread.
The survey was conducted by the NBS to monitor the impact of COVID -19 to access the impact of the pandemic on the national economy.
“In order to track the impacts of the pandemic, the National Bureau of Statistics implemented the Nigeria COVID-19 National Longitudinal Phone Survey (COVID-19 NLPS) on a nationally representative sample of 1,950 households,” NBS said in the report, ” COVID-19 IMPACT MONITORING.”
It explained in the report that 42 percent of respondents who were working before the outbreak reported that they were not currently working due to COVID-19.
According to the NBS, the survey was conducted between April to May 2020, during the time when the index case was identified in the country.
It stated that the impact of COVID-19 has been most strongly felt in the commerce, service, and agriculture sectors.
Seventy-nine percent of households surveyed reported that their households’ total income have decreased since mid- March, the report said.
In the report, NBS said experience of economic shocks by Nigerians in the few months after the outbreak of coronavirus far exceeds shocks experienced between 2017 and 2019.
“The most widely reported shock experienced by households was an increase in prices of major food items faced by 85 percent of households since the outbreak compared to only 19 percent between January 2017 and January 2019,” the report noted.
The report indicated that the coping mechanism for 51 percent of households interviewed was reducing food consumption between March – May 2020.
“Many households have struggled to cope with these widespread shocks with 51 percent of all households resorting to reducing food consumption.”
To further cope with the shocks, NBS’s survey said many households were also drawing down their savings, 29 percent of the households falls into this category.
Also, a total of 26 percentage of interviewed households who needed medical treatment reported
not being able to access treatment.
The survey further revealed that 38 percent of households with children who attended school prior to school closures due to the pandemic reported that their children did not engage in any learning or education activities.
Most of the households whose children did not engage in learning activities said between March to May, they did not have any contact with their children’s teachers.
Lukman Abolade is an Investigative reporter with The ICIR. Reach out to him via [email protected], on twitter @AboladeLAA and FB @Correction94