THE National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has reported that four in every ten Nigerians have real per capita expenditures below 137,430 Naira per year.

And that 40.1 per cent of the total population in Nigeria is classified as poor, excluding the people of Borno state.

This translates to over 82.9 million Nigerians considered poor by national standards.

Though the survey included Borno state, samples were not representative of the entire state since only households from accessible (safe to visit areas only) were interviewed.

Thus, the Borno sample is considered non-random and non-representative.

Three indicators used by the NBS include poverty headcount ratio, poverty gap and Gini index.

The headcount ratio defines the proportion of the population that is living in the households where the value of per capita total consumption expenditure is below or equal to the poverty line.

In economics, per capita expenditure means the market value or price at which goods are sold in the market of all the goods purchased by the consumers.

Between September of 2018 and October of 2019, the NBS conducted the latest round of the Nigerian Living Standards Survey (NLSS) after a decade.

It is represented at the state level with a sample size of 22,110 households, focusing on increasing the understanding of living conditions of the Nigerian population.

The survey gathered data on household and individual demographics (age, gender, marital status, among others), access to education, health and basic services, employment, assets, and income, the NBS disclosed. 

The bureau showed that poverty is measured using consumption expenditures rather than income in Nigeria, the poor are defined as those who subsist below the poverty line, while the non-poor have consumption expenditures higher than the poverty threshold.

The world poverty clock has shown that from the history of Nigeria till date, Nigeria currently has 102 million citizens living in poverty which accounts for 50 per cent of citizens.

Also, recall that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government said it can only cater to 2.6 million poor Nigerians in the cash transfer intervention programme, which represents  29 per cent of the poorest of the poor with the cash transfer intervention programme.