DESPITE the policies of Bola Tinubu’s administration and its economic reforms, the World Bank has projected that poverty in Nigeria would increase by 3.6 percentage points by 2027.

The current administration has promoted key policies of fuel subsidy removal and floating the naira. But the World Bank paints a gloomy picture, noting that more Nigerians would be pushed into poverty. It cited risks of over-dependence on natural resources.

This projection is from the World Bank’s Africa Pulse report, released during the ongoing Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington, DC.

The report paints a troubling outlook for poverty reduction in Nigeria, highlighting that despite some recent gains in economic activity, particularly in the non-oil sector during the last quarter of 2024, structural issues related to resource dependence and national fragility are likely to hinder progress.

According to the World Bank, Nigeria, alongside other resource-rich and fragile countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, will experience a worsening poverty situation, unlike non-resource-rich countries, which are expected to see faster poverty reduction.

“Poverty in resource-rich, fragile countries—including large economies like Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo—is projected to increase by 3.6 percentage points between 2022 and 2027,” the report stated.

The report underscores that Sub-Saharan Africa continues to have the highest extreme poverty rate globally, with a disproportionate concentration of the poor. In 2024, 80 per cent of the world’s 695 million extreme poor lived in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Within the region, half of the 560 million extreme poor were located in just four countries.

In comparison, South Asia accounted for eight per cent, East Asia and the Pacific two per cent, the Middle East and North Africa shared five per cent, and Latin America and the Caribbean contributed three per cent.

Resource-rich countries are expected to lag in poverty reduction due to slowing oil prices and weak fiscal structures. Conversely, non-resource-rich countries are benefiting from high agricultural commodity prices, which are fueling stronger growth despite fiscal pressures.

The report adds: “This follows a well-established pattern whereby resource wealth combined with fragility or conflict is associated with the highest poverty rates—averaging 46 per cent in 2024, which is 13 percentage points higher than in non-fragile, resource-rich countries.”

The Nigerian government, despite its numerous policies, still struggles with lifting citizens out of poverty.

Some analysts say most of its policies are not wholistic enough to address key economic problems; rather, they are interventionist and not capable of solving perennial poverty issues.

“Most of the government’s programmes and policies are knee-jerk and don’t provide a holistic solution to our perennial poverty issues. Oftentimes, the government gets consultants who design such policies, many of such are disconnected from the real needs of the people and what can provide a lasting solution to the unemployment concerns,” a development economist, Celestine Okeke, told The ICIR.

Despite some of its interventionist programmes, the Federal Government has disclosed that 133 million people in the country, representing 63 per cent of the population, lived in different categories of poverty.

The government, giving the figure in its  “multi-dimensional” poverty report, said that 65 per cent of the poor (86 million people) live in the North, while 35 per cent (nearly 47 million) live in the South.